Samuel Druker - Can you give us a preview of what search will be like on Longhorn?

I was a little disappointed in the video.  I thought it would be a little bit longer and maybe show us what is happening underneath the hood or even a preview using the latest bits.

Yeah, I agree.  We can learn more from the text accompanying it than the video itself.  Sounds good though, from what I understand of it.

The Channel 9 Team wrote:

Imagine typing in your explorer Window (it'll be something different in Longhorn, but play along here). You type "B" and all your pictures, documents, contacts, and other things that start with "B" instantly show up.

You continue and type "U." Now you see all those files that start with "BU." Continue on "D;" "G;" "E..."

Now in front of you are only documents that start with the name BUDGE. Hey, all your budget documents are there. Your Excel spreadsheets. The Word documents. Anything with the word "budge" in them. Continue typing and your available choices continue to be whittled down.

It is not to say that WinFS won't be revolutionary, but I think it is fair to say that X1 does this right now on current versions of Windows operating systems, even if it does it with a low-tech aproach. It even incorporates viewers that let you quickly preview file contents on the viewing panel.

Although I can imagine some, it would be interesting if Samuel could elaborate on the advantages of WinFS over X1, beyond the fact that Longhorn will reach a wider public.

X1 (and enfish and lookout) do the job for full-text search on the stuff they know about in the particular application they support. However, WinFS is a database platform. As I said in the other video, it's a storage platform. Developers write new apps, those apps use schemas to describe the user's data and rely on the system repository to hold those items. Full-text search is just one thing that you can build on that. Much more important, IMO, is what the database guys call query and relations.

I really want to be able to find the ppt draft that I put together 4 weeks ago and sent to my boss. I may or may not remember a key phrase from it. I can however, use a straight forward UI to filter on "ppt" then on "last month's work" then "in an attachment relationship". Or how about show me the list of "people I went to a meeting with last week"? And heck, once I figure out the types of filters that are useful to me and how I work with my computer, I'd love to be able to share those constructs with my colleagues, friends and family.

I speak to this in the video more, and I really wanted to make the point that word wheel and full-text search are useful, but today it's all we have so we use it as a crutch. The (well-meaning) mods here put a prologue on the video that runs counter to that, but there is a continuum of useful ways to organize, find, relate and act on your data. Even if you love it, you have to think that FTS isn't that useful over pictures and songs today (yeah, I know you can search the tags).

Sooo... pretty much it's exactly like Quicksilver.  Only not.

shortest.

video.

ever.

Apparently I said too much that wasn't releaseable . I can't complain really, the Channel9 guys are working hard and have a lot of support signed up to do these videos in the most direct informal way possible. Unlike the big execs, we're not working from scripts here. The folks who keep me and my colleagues out of PR trouble sift through all the stuff we say and then suggest edits. It's a crazy amount of work (which is why most real PR stuff happens with scripts approved ahead of time), but I'm really glad to have the opportunity to speak informally.

As for Quicksilver, I can't stress the non-comparison enough. WinFS is a development platform for persistent storage. It is not just a search tool for files, it is not just a relational database shoehorned into an OS. It is a full-fledged platform component.

This new technology isn't actually new, its just putting many existing components in a different place, where we didn't put them before.

There are many tools that are capable of doing the same job, though they are called database server, web server and file server, acting together for a specialized purpose. This 'new' technology is putting the file system into a database (something others have done long ago, for e.g. 'change management').

What this lacks is what more do I get. Currently it doesn't provide anything. Sure you can relate documents, but that I have been doing for a long time, callin it a well-organized (usually) directory structure. In some cases these are specialized tools that do the work for you, the file system will never be able to do.
You can do a full-text search, it might only get a little faster and what does it really give me? Or is it the existing indexing service, but only integrated into the file system?

The information provided here don't give me any information what is provides me...

hi,

since i hav a proposal towards "Enhancing  th Virtuality in Current File System", i went thro many of WinFS Goal features.. tho u promise a better grouping & Searching; i had seen a very few details about the promised Grouping part in WinFS.

since i find it little difficult in implementing my proposal which has a common goal of providing a Better User Experience in Grouping Data , it would be useful if u mention certain things about the Promised grouping part..
If requested wil send my proposal for ur review.

urs sincerely

shiva
iowint@gmail.com