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Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

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Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

#81

Post by cm3 »

frik wrote: post #38
maslam wrote: post #30

I have vivid memories of working on Longhorn as an intern. It was an incredibly ambitious project - rewrite of the "filesystem" (really, a relational object store!), driver framework and display stack to name a few. The project failed the same exact way many projects fail - they are too ambitious and not well-scoped. The demo Hillel showed, IIRC, was complete vaporware.

WinFS wasn't a filesystem, but implemented upon NTFS as filesystem filter driver and dotNet based service, the files were stored in a hidden directory (SQL Server Compact and raw files with generated filenames in sub folders). The dotNet service was just very slow. The original vision of "information at your fingertip" was behind the Cairo project. And Cairo had an object stored in the NTFS filesystem driver. WinNT4…

And from what I understand ReFS is also implemented on top of NTFS, but this time it's real, shipped code and meant to provide some of the features found in ZFS to Windows users.

Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

#82

Post by agumonkey »

frik wrote: post #38
maslam wrote: post #30

I have vivid memories of working on Longhorn as an intern. It was an incredibly ambitious project - rewrite of the "filesystem" (really, a relational object store!), driver framework and display stack to name a few. The project failed the same exact way many projects fail - they are too ambitious and not well-scoped. The demo Hillel showed, IIRC, was complete vaporware.

WinFS wasn't a filesystem, but implemented upon NTFS as filesystem filter driver and dotNet based service, the files were stored in a hidden directory (SQL Server Compact and raw files with generated filenames in sub folders). The dotNet service was just very slow. The original vision of "information at your fingertip" was behind the Cairo project. And Cairo had an object stored in the NTFS filesystem driver. WinNT4…

Was it the relational layer that was bad ? a bad fit ? or the .net vm not fast enough at the time ?

Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

#84

Post by WalterGR »

cm3 wrote: post #81
frik wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WinFS wasn't a filesystem, but implemented upon NTFS as filesystem filter driver and dotNet based service, the files were stored in a hidden directory (SQL Server Compact and raw files with generated filenames in sub folders). The dotNet service was just very slow. The original vision of "information at your fingertip" was behind the Cairo project. And Cairo had an object stored in the NTFS filesystem driver. WinNT4…

And from what I understand ReFS is also implemented on top of NTFS, but this time it's real, shipped code and meant to provide some of the features found in ZFS to Windows users.

this time it's real, shipped code

WinFS was real. Before the project was cancelled, we released a beta and a "beta refresh" - both installable on XP.

(Disclaimer: I was on the WinFS team.)

Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

#85

Post by WalterGR »

PeterStuer wrote: post #71
badminton1 wrote: post #6

I would like to know about what happened with the Windows Future Storage (WinFS)

I remember, having just lived through the semantic 'Core-Ontology' wars in academia, explaining to a gradually more shocked Microsoft evangelist in 2003 why WinFS would never be accepted, even with Microsoft's potential leverage behind it. That said, I have no idea if semantics where even an issue in the eventual decision to retire WinFS as the future of storage.

explaining to a gradually more shocked Microsoft evangelist in 2003 why WinFS would never be accepted, even with Microsoft's potential leverage behind it.

Why would it never be accepted? My dream is to create a similar platform.

That said, I have no idea if semantics where even an issue in the eventual decision to retire WinFS as the future of storage.

They weren't.

(Disclaimer: I was on the WinFS team.)

Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

#86

Post by Rafert »

NamTaf wrote: post #23
ams6110 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also wasn't that the release that had endless popup warnings asking permission for arcane things. Anyone who used it became trained to just click "Allow" a dozen times just to get on with what they wanted to do.

The issue was chiefly that XP didn't enforce good programming practices (storing user info in /Program Files/ was rife and one of many issues). Introducing the UAC security structure meant that suddenly all of these applications tried to do things that triggered UAC elevation prompts. This was addressed twofold, as far as I understand: 1) Application developers were railroaded into best practices and forced not to do…

Many consider Windows 7 to be Vista 'done right', but Vista paved the way for that to happen with breaking changes you described.

Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

#87

Post by ygra »

cm3 wrote: post #81
frik wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WinFS wasn't a filesystem, but implemented upon NTFS as filesystem filter driver and dotNet based service, the files were stored in a hidden directory (SQL Server Compact and raw files with generated filenames in sub folders). The dotNet service was just very slow. The original vision of "information at your fingertip" was behind the Cairo project. And Cairo had an object stored in the NTFS filesystem driver. WinNT4…

And from what I understand ReFS is also implemented on top of NTFS, but this time it's real, shipped code and meant to provide some of the features found in ZFS to Windows users.

ReFS provides the same filesystem APIs as NTFS, but the implementation does not depend on NTFS at all.

Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

#88

Post by graiz »

snuxoll wrote: post #63
graiz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raymond Chen writes a great blog called the OldNewThing that has some good stories. I think asking why it failed is rather hard to explain and I suspect different people who were on the project would have different explanations. I worked on XP and a little bit of Longhorn. In my opinion one of the reasons was that much of the product direction and leadership shifted. The MSN app team merged with the shell team after…

JoeB? That wouldn't happen to be Joe Belfiore by any chance, would it?

Yes. It was the one and the same. JoeB was heading the Windows User Experience team in Windows Shell before going to the TV team and then most recently Windows Mobile.

Re: Experience Longhorn – A look at a defining Microsoft project

#90

Post by Esau »

StevePerkins wrote: post #22
unsignedqword wrote: post #8

Vista was not a very well-received release, but I remember using 64-bit Vista way back when. Maybe my memory is failing me a little, but I don't really recall Vista being that bad or unstable. UAC, of course, was a little annoying then, but 7 felt a little more unstable and crash-prone than Vista. My dad still uses a Vista desktop regularly (a 2007 install) and as far as I can tell it still works perfectly fine for h…

Aside from UAC... the biggest issue with Vista is that the required system resources was a significant jump over XP, and too many manufacturers shipped machines that were simply too under-powered for the preinstalled OS. In those days, I remember seeing Vista laptops with 1 GB of RAM, on which Vista was unusable. People had to edit arcane registry settings to disable the "Aero" look-and-feel, and drop down to a more…

UAC was not that big of a deal. I used Vista and it hardly bothered me. I suspect most of the whining came from people not used to the separation of user and administrative privileges.
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