Sam Druker - Answers Channel9 questions about WinFS | TheChannel9Team

Jaz
From the depths of Wales I come

i don't understand the obsession with email. i'm a home user. my email doesn't bother me. Could we use some better examples than email to promote WinFS

Frankie Fresh
.NET Developer and so much more.

For a lot of people, email is the focal point of their daily lives. It basically controls the workflow and distribution of data, documents, and scheduling. Even at home, email is the primary point of contact for me for most of my information.

It's no coincidence that way back in the early 90's Lotus Notes became so popular. The market was calling for a networked, hyperlinked, enterprise messaging system. Mail was very much at the heart of Notes.

Granted there was a lot of over head with it, but that really started the trend of email becoming such a powerful force in business. Prior to that, most people checked their email once or twice a day, becuase the mail clients were resource hogs. Keep in mind that the most coveted PC at the time was a 486/66mhz and we all remember how great Win 3.1 was for resource management/multi-taksing. Wink

It would appear that a major driving force behind WinFS is to take this information and integrate it into the file system. In the future, the primary point of contact for personal/business/etc information will be the file system itself. The file system is where all the data ends up being stored anyway. I mean how many times have you detached a document, saved it to the hard drive, deleted the email and then forgot where the file was?

This is a huge jump forward, as email has its weakpoints and was originally designed for a mid 90's kind of world. (ie pre spam, email worms, and assorted mail-based nasties)

At first, I didn't buy into the idea of the file system sitting on top of a database engine, but I'm warming up to it quickly the more I think about it.

Jaz
From the depths of Wales I come

ok sure but i can't relate to all this email nonsense. Sure maybe as a system analysis i'd say "look you guys, Longhorn does this, and i believe that to cut down on time then you should get this". but i'm not.

I'd just like to see more scenarios than the age old email one. it doesn't relate to me at all.

The Channel 9 Team
5 guys from Redmond

Sam will talk about other scenarios in future videos. One, in particular that he talks about, are photos. I'll get that video up for you tomorrow.

Manip

I think this is promising too much and I doubt it can deliver. It has a greater chance of wasting CPU/HDD/RAM than to actually deliver useful information.. It is like a super-hyped version of the indexing service really, except now your computer stores information without you knowing. I want to see where they draw the line between redundant information and useful information. It also has vast security concerns because it can store duplicate copies of part or all of documentation that you may have deleted.

I find it curious that all the content on WinFS I have seen talks a lot about how it works and what it stores but I am yet to see actual uses for the information. I mean integrating an E-Mail search with the shell is no big deal but then how do you go from that to integrating it with the file system? The same is true about pictures and word documents. You could easily justify the need for a more advanced search built into the shell that supports all of this but a new file system is wasteful and useless.

Longhorn has some things I would like to try but this is not one of them.

samdruk
samdruk

Manip wrote:

Longhorn has some things I would like to try but this is not one of them.

I fight this all the time. I think we've had a hard time really explaining the power of an integrated storage platform and we'll need to show folks like you the really interesting apps on top of it to prove our point. I will certainly accept this criticism, and I hope that when you see what ISV's build on top it and what users can do with their data you'll think otherwise.

samdruk
samdruk

I suppose I may have overemphasized mail (including news, RSS posts, fax and IM message) in this post. One reason is that I've seen previous discussions around WinFS that are very photo centric or mp3 centric. I talk about the messaging centric viewpoint because I'm using that as a proxy for talking about information relating to People in general.

It's the People scenarios that I think really make WinFS a compelling world for users (not just ISV's).

Frankie's right about this being a long standing wave of computer adoption driven by collaboration. Lotus Notes was a great waypoint in that arc, along with Usenet, BBS's, Bix/Compuserv, ITS NOTES, message boards, RSS and all the various incarnations of mail from uucp to modern SMTP/MIME. People love to connect with each other.

Frankie Fresh
.NET Developer and so much more.

samdruk wrote:
People love to connect with each other.

Sounds like you've read the Clue Train Manifesto. Wink

This kind of skepticism is natural for a new feature. I have to admit, I was one of the skeptics, but the more I think about it, the more the idea is growing on me. I'll wait to see an implementation before I pass judgment. Wink

samdruk
samdruk

Frankie? Wait, you're the guy that posted the British pub rules thing. You owe me a couple hours back from my life; and exactly where was that article when I needed it?

I worked in a London (well, Woolwich) based startup back in the late 80's. I lived in Boston, but spent many a night in some dump of a hotel across the pond contemplating just heading back straight into the office after hitting the pub because it was more appealing doing all-nighters rather than figure out the arcane rituals required to obtain the only substance that made life reasonable for a geeky unsocial 20 yr old so far from home: real beer.

Thank you for assuming I'm hip, but I haven't read The Cluetrain Manifesto, at least yet.