Right now, the kind of application dictates how data is stored. Databases are typically used for more numerically oriented applications, such as storing bank account information, while file systems are usually used for document-centric applications with unstructured data types. The problem is that retrieving information from different storage systems is a challenge, at best.
WinFS seeks to bridge the worlds of unstructured documents and data stored in relational databases with a common storage and look-up mechanism. If Microsoft is successful, the net result would likely be greater data interoperability and much improved viewing and searching.
The tools could also permit Microsoft to undermine the utility of commercial search engines such as Google by making its own software the easiest place to initiate an investigation. Spell-checkers, after all, were once independent applications too.
"They don't want to rely on someone else's technology," said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft. "Microsoft's point of view is that it has the right to include pretty much what it wants to in Windows, and they look at search as one of those things people do with computers."
Dumais declined to comment on whether or when the search tools developed by Microsoft Research would be included in shipping products, noting that many of the ideas have just been devised.
Still, some of the work is already being tested fairly extensively. Over 1,000 internal users at Microsoft are already using "Stuff I've Seen," a research project that conducts hard-drive searches, and Dumais' group is conducting interviews with these beta users to determine how people actually use search.
Search sophistication
Search, in the Microsoft view, is ubiquitous, but not very efficient. A fairly simple query can generate 20 or more screens of results. The results are also generally not well tailored to an individual's taste or the context of their needs.
