WinFS, a marriage of database technology with a file system, which was once touted as one of the three key "pillars" of Windows Vista, has been cancelled. However, portions of the technology will find their way into future versions of SQL Server and ADO.NET. The project fell victim to a changing competitive landscape in which simpler solutions, such as MSN Desktop Search (now known as Windows Desktop Search), delivered the most compelling of WinFS's proposed benefits. It also illustrates Microsoft's "Darwinian" development philosophy, which allows multiple groups to work on overlapping or even competing technologies until an obvious "winner" emerges.

Overtaken by Events

Unveiled in Oct. 2003 as one of the key pillars of Vista (then known by the code name Longhorn), WinFS was to use an integrated database engine (derived from SQL Server) on top of the current Windows file system to enable applications and users to label files with custom properties (e.g., geographic coordinates where a digital photo was taken) to simplify searching and organizing information. Information was to be kept in multiple databases (or stores) with WinFS efficiently synchronizing information between those stores and the file system. It also was to provide standard property schemas for commonly used data types, such as contacts, calendar items, and e-mail. The key benefits WinFS was supposed to provide include better file search and organization, and better interoperability through common schema that would simplify sharing of data types (such as contacts and calendar events.)

Since its introduction, however, WinFS has suffered a number of setbacks, including the Sept. 2004 decision to remove it from Vista and postpone it to an unspecified later date. In the end, WinFS fell victim to Microsoft's "Darwinian" development strategy, which allows multiple groups to work on similar, even overlapping technologies, in the hope that one will emerge as the right solution. In the case of WinFS, the project found itself in a situation in which both the Office and Developer divisions (along with other parts of the Windows division) were delivering technologies that provided many of WinFS's proposed benefits:

Google and Desktop Search. Google, as well as Microsoft's own MSN division, introduced desktop search products that, although lacking the extensibility of WinFS's custom properties, delivered the most important end-user benefit: the ability to quickly locate files based on their content. Customers naturally began to ask why they would bother to tag files with additional information if existing tools can return meaningful results without additional work, particularly once Microsoft announced that desktop search would be integrated with Windows.

Office and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). For corporate users, WSS, built into Windows Server 2003, provided many of WinFS's organizational benefits, including file and data storage within a single database and a system for tagging documents with custom properties. WSS has been gaining popularity, is being further improved for Office 2007, and has garnered support from a number of ISVs. Furthermore, in addition to being accessible via a Web browser, WSS is accessible directly from the Office suite, making it readily available to the vast majority of corporate users. Meanwhile, the Office team made clear that it had no plans to support the WinFS schemas in Outlook 2007. This sent the message to other ISVs that WSS was a more important product and Microsoft itself is waiting until about 2009 to deliver a version of Outlook that could share information such as contacts and calendars with other applications via WinFS.

ADO.NET. As development proceeded, WinFS's already ambitious goals expanded and it began to overlap with other technologies. In 2004, it absorbed ObjectSpaces, a group within Microsoft trying to build a generic object-relational (O/R) mapping system—technology that allows data from different tables in a database system to appear as a single object in object-oriented programming languages such as C#. Numerous vendors produce O/R mapping systems, but their approaches vary and are not turnkey solutions—they require significant customization based on the specifics of the schema being mapped.

Expanding its scope to include O/R mapping systems not only increased the amount of work for the WinFS team but also brought them into conflict with the team working on ADO.NET—Microsoft's strategic data-access API—which is also developing technology to better integrate relational data with object-oriented languages.

Windows and NTFS. Even as the WinFS team set about to combine file-system technology with a database, Microsoft's own file-system team was not sitting still. It has recently announced that it is working on Transactional NTFS—a feature of the next Windows server product (still code-named Longhorn) that will allow the OS to coordinate updates to multiple files in a way that guarantees that either all files are successfully written or the entire set is rolled back.

What Happens Now

Although Microsoft has cancelled WinFS, portions of the technology will be absorbed into other groups. The O/R mapping system will be merged with the next version of ADO.NET. Moving the O/R system to ADO.NET allows Microsoft to develop a unified O/R system and to integrate that with its LINQ project (which makes it easier for developers to write database queries in C# and Visual Basic.)

In addition, the ability to synchronize tables in a database with files in the file system will be incorporated into the next version of SQL Server. Although merging the synchronization capabilities into SQL Server takes what was to be a generic OS service and makes it a feature of SQL Server, it focuses the company's database efforts on a strategic product and potentially allows it to translate that into increased revenue.

Resources

The blog posting announcing the change, along with a follow-up post, can be found at blogs.msdn.com/winfs/archive/2006/06/23/644706.aspx and blogs.msdn.com/winfs/archive/2006/06/26/648075.aspx.

LINQ is described in "Integrated Query Next on VB, C# Roadmaps" on page 19 of the Dec. 2005 Update.

The only beta of WinFS is described in "WinFS: A First Look" on page 5 of the Jan. 2006 Update.