Windows Vista - WinFS

InformationWeek > Microsoft Windows > Microsoft Begins To Test Delayed Windows File System > August 29, 2005: "A year after Microsoft scaled back Windows Vista by removing a key technology from its development plan, the company released an early test version of its next-generation Windows file system, code-named WinFS.

Microsoft on Monday released a beta 1 edition of WinFS, a relational file system that can store documents, E-mail messages, photos and multimedia files, and structured data from applications in a common way. Using WinFS, software programs could make use of each other's data more easily. Microsoft made WinFS available to subscribers to its Microsoft Developer Network technical Web site; attendees at the company's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles Sept. 13-16 will receive the software as well. The final version of WinFS will be available sometime after the arrival of Windows Vista, the desktop operating system due late next year.

Using WinFS, programmers will be able to write apps that draw on common lists of contacts and other data stored in Windows, says Quentin Clark, Microsoft's WinFS program management director. For example, a sales rep could create a list of high-value customers, then filter his E-mail to show only messages from those people. An online shopper could fill out an order form for a gift that lets her choose a contact from her E-mail program's address book to ship the item to. "End users will get this experience of not having to enter the same information over and over again," Clark says."

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