New Windows file system enters testing

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OK; that covers part of it.

But the files still must be actually written to disk *somewhere* in the process chain. It seems that what they were doing was storing the metadata in a RDBMS including the physical location of the file. Nothing in that appears to make it either impossible or unreasonable to have one or more file systems installed and running simultaneously. Unless it was written as an all-or-nothing sort of project.

Why not make a virtual directory entry just one more field in a metadata record. You could group files into views that would be indistinguishable from physical directories for those users (or applications) that need the hierarchical grouping while allowing the DBMS to retrieve files based on any combination of metadata fields whether or not the directory or path was specified as part off the selection criteria.

Besides, didn't MS scale the specs back from the DBMS (object or relational; it doesn't really matter because they haven't delivered it) to metadata management system on top of NTFS? That sounds like an achievable goal that wouldn't necessarily render the entire previous file/folder paradigm meaningless. Nor would it require you to make the all-or-nothing sort of choice alluded to earlier; the DBMS could be central and contain information on all the volumes it manages or each volume could store its own data in a local partition with a query engine that interrogates all of the volume db partitions as required...

Besides, has MS been bashfull about adding an entire new set of API for a new subsystem? Why couldn't the OS have had two sets of functions (where appropriate) with the same name - one for the NTFS volumes and one for the WinFS volumes? Couldn't the OS select the API from the pair based on the destination of the operation?

F'rinstance, doesn't ReiserFS provide a means of storing and querying basic metadata? Can't I have one part of my file system using ReiserFS and others using ext2, ext3, etc.?

I may not understand this whole topic well enough (and probably don't), but it looks like NTFS could have had a series of changes applied over the years (and versions) with the updated version installed on a voluntary basis by the users *if* MS had wanted to make improvements or additions.

The real problem appears to be that incremental change permits others to keep up while sudden radical change pulls the rug from under their feet. The MS view appears to be that *no* improvement at all is better than *any* improvement that competitors can keep up with.

Posted by: fmcgowan   Posted on: 08/30/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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