WinFS for WinXP [Archive] - Icrontic Forums

Private_Snoball

4 May 2005, 5:20pm

Hello there,

I read an article in MaximumPC that talked about the [innovative] WinFS that was canceled for development in Longhorn is now releasing for WinXP. I read up about it but I don't see what is so innovative about it.

The whole idea behind it doesn't seem like it is that spectacular. If I am reading what it does correctly it just puts every file in alphabetical order or in whatever order you feel like sorting them. Can someone please explain to me what is so awesome about WInFS and any possible uses outside of the home network.

Later,
The Rug

Gobbles

4 May 2005, 5:40pm

it uses a database style model for indexing every file on your system, which would allow you to search for a file and have it return results at incredible fast speeds.

entropy

4 May 2005, 8:33pm

I imagine it'd be like the Indexing service on crack, which may or may not be a good thing. Personally I don't like the Indexing service, so I turned it off. I do a search maybe once every few months, or less, and having to wait an extra minute or so isn't that big of a deal to me. So to have my computer going through and keeping tabs on every damned file is useless for me. Even if it is on crack.

Oh. About WinFS specifically. I don't remember if it was integrated into early Longhorn builds or not (it might've been.. or possibly just turned off), but it wasn't entirely functional (obviously). If it was, and was working at least somewhat, I didn't have a clue. I remember seeing/reading that it also sorts files into 'stacks' or some such. Like if you want pictures 1-100 to be together, say for a vacation you took, it would show you 1-100 in a neat little skewed stack. Slide over them and the thumbnail pops out and gets a bit larger. Maybe that was just some picture organization thing planned for any OS, but it's similar.

It's also supposed to make system-wide communication possible by some means or another, I believe. So Outlook (that seems to be really important... Outlook is always the example) could communicate with, say, Word, or Messenger, or pretty much anything else. I think.

TheBaron

5 May 2005, 7:40am

all microsoft office products can already communicate between each other via activeX channels, thats how we use matlab to talk to powerpoint at work

Private_Snoball

5 May 2005, 3:02pm

So basically if I am understanding this, it is like a big upgrade to the horrible WinXP search feature. As opposed to typing in part of the name you can search more specific sections or get every file if you just want to browse your harddrive your network files.

Thanks,
The Rug

Gobbles

5 May 2005, 5:05pm

beregid

5 May 2005, 7:25pm

yes kinda.

Heres the deal. Its a content based storage information system. Say you want to find things in your system based on content. Like doing a search for the word *windows*

winfs, will not only return every file, folder with the name windows, it will also return, every document, every text file with the word windows IN it. Its a complete context search system.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/default.aspx?pull=/msdnmag/issues/04/01/WinFS/default.aspx

its a techie read but has some good info.

a feature like that is available in mac's new tiger o/s. a little search window pops up, very small , txt area and a search button i think so it doesn't take up your desktop and executes a search similar to the winfs. it also searches the text of files and documents.

drasnor

5 May 2005, 8:58pm

WinFS is Microsoft's answer to Linux programmers finally getting close to reverse engineering the complete NTFS spec. It seems like MS rolls out a new filesystem every time this happens.

In other news, this search feature has been available for awhile now on *nix including MacOS X. It's called grep, and if you want to learn how to use it just open up your terminal and type 'man grep'.

-drasnor :fold: