One of the ways that WinFS will improve searching across Windows machines is a mechanism to store related "metadata" with a given file. The metadata will provide more context and keyword information than Windows applications do today. For example, currently a person can use Windows to view when photos were taken. WinFS is being designed to allow a person to search with more specific information, such as who is in the picture.
WinFS also is designed to improve search across several applications on a corporate network. If WinFS is used as the underlying storage system in many applications, a person could search for all documents and data related to a particular topic.
The metadata will be described in "schemas," or an XML data format. These schemas will define common objects, such as documents, music files and e-mail messages, which the operating system can find and store, Muglia said. Customers can define their own schemas for identifying stored data as well.
The need for WinFS is being driven by the explosion of data and ever-growing hard drives, according to Microsoft. The company has recognised that search, or querying, is fast becoming a more practical means of retrieving information than navigating through a hierarchy of folders and subfolders.
"With 1-terabyte hard drives in the not-too-distant future, it is starting to seem reasonable to store pretty much any piece of information you own on a PC. But if you can't organise it, what's the point?" Jeremy Mazner, a Longhorn evangelist at Microsoft, wrote in a recent blog posting.
In quest of improved search
Microsoft competitors are hot on the trail of improved information retrieval. IBM plans to incorporate search capabilities from a research project called WebFountain in a forthcoming version of its DB2 Information Integrator. Oracle several years ago introduced into its Oracle 9i database the Internet File System, which was designed to let people search across databases and data that are typically stored in file systems such as documents and Web pages.
Microsoft also is investing in Web search technologies independent of WinFS to enhance its MSN portal and take on Web search leader Google.
Directions on Microsoft's Cherry said the technical difficulty of creating a new file system could well be one of the toughest nuts for Microsoft to crack in Longhorn--and a likely culprit for any future delays.
"This is one of the harder things they have to implement," Cherry said. "It's not a small task. They have to come up with a great design, implement the design, and a lot of little pieces have to come into place."
One piece that's crucial to adoption of WinFS is the support of Windows software developers. People will get the benefits of the expanded search capabilities only if third-party software companies use WinFS, analysts note.
At the Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft is expected to go into greater technical detail on how developers can make use of the planned features in WinFS. For example, WinFS will have synchronisation capabilities, which will allow a person to synchronise data stored between WinFS and other data stores. The data storage system will allow developers to build security into applications.
WinFS will address concerns in how developers create applications, Muglia said. Whereas programmers had to deal with a separate data format for each type of application, WinFS provides developers with a new storage option designed to bridge all application types.
WinFS's enhanced searching capabilities will give developers another option other than relational databases for storing information, said Mike Sax, president of Sax Software.
"Having 'rich' files that have searchable attributes would allow you to build apps in such a way that you no longer need a database, but you still have all the advantages of doing fast searches," Sax said.
Even with the planned improvements, Microsoft has made it clear that it intends to create a smooth transition for application developers as well. A conference description of WinFS notes that the storage system supports the new application programming interfaces (API) built into Longhorn as well as the existing Win32 APIs for tapping into Windows' functions.
For end users, the introduction of Longhorn and the new file system could mean a clearer view of widely scattered information. Rather than navigating through a hierarchy of different directories, people can rely more on queries.
"With WinFS, the concept of hierarchy becomes a secondary concept," Muglia said. "It still exists, but it's not necessarily the only, not necessarily the primary, way users find information."
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Why wait until 2006 for this. Most of these features are available now in the form of Oracle iFS and others.