Exit WinFS

Remember WinFS? Windows Future Storage or Windows File System or whatever it meant? Yes one of the three pillars of Longhorn (now Windows Vista). Look, here it is:

(Source)

WinFS was supposed to be the big change in how you managed your data. It would be super easy to search any kind of data. It would be possible to link files to contacts, contacts to images and so on and so forth. A slimmed down SQL server would be powering this on every desktop. It was going to be great.

Then, almost two years ago Microsoft announced WinFS was not going to make it into Longhorn, it was more work than expected. It would be beta around the release of Longhorn (now Vista). A shame, WinFS was the most interesting feature of Longhorn for me. But still Vista will have better search capabilities, but it’s not WinFS.

Two days ago the WinFS team announced the following:

They make it seem like WinFS was about large-scale data access for enterprises, for me it wasn’t that at all. It was about managing personal data. Pictures, contacts, e-mail, music, video. Adding meta data to them, linking them. But all of that seems to be forgotten now. Anyway it’s not going to happen. That WinFS is over. Dead. This is just spinning it in a way to make it look like a super-exciting thing. A bit pathetic.