"The desire has been around forever. It's almost like the Holy Grail of data storage," said Michael Cherry, an analyst at market researcher Directions on Microsoft.
The software giant later this month will disclose additional details on the company's ambitious plans with WinFS. At the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles at the end of October, Microsoft will describe how application developers and end users can take advantage of the revamped file system.
Roping in Longhorn
WinFS will be one of several new initiatives that Microsoft will discuss at the conference, most of which are designed to build interest in Longhorn, the desktop edition of Windows due in 2005 or 2006.
Microsoft will give attendees an early version of Longhorn, as well as editions of its Visual Studio.Net and SQL Server databases, which are both due to be completed in the second half of 2004. The company also will sketch out a Web services initiative called Indigo and a graphics and presentation system named Avalon, both of which will be integral to Longhorn.
Microsoft calls WinFS "the next-generation storage platform for Windows (that) manages data for organising, searching and sharing." With WinFS, the company seeks to create a common system for finding and storing data across all types of Windows applications.
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 cumbersome, 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 will be greater data interoperability and much improved viewing and searching.
