WinFS Revisited
This week, Microsoft made available beta 1 of the WinFS subsystem to MSDN members and will make the same code available to attendees of its Professional Developers Conference 2005 next month.
WinFS will not make it into initial shipments of the Longhorn, or Windows Vista client next year, or the Vista Server in 2007, said Quentin Clark, director of program management for WinFS at Microsoft.
The goal of the early bits was to give developers an early look at the base file system, related APIs and gather feedback, Clark said.
"Beta one is the base relational file system, you can put files in and get to them through the Win32 APIs...Since PDC 2003, the APIs have changed somewhat, managed code APIs now, synchronisation adapters and a set of services atop the APIs that have evolved," he noted.