WinFS Beta 1 Released

Once upon a time, long long ago (well in 1991, to be precise), Microsoft announced the Cairo project. Sometimes it was touted as an operating system, sometimes it was a project to develop new technologies, but whatever it was, it was something that used to remind me of the attempts of the Brown Booby bird to get off the ground, and never quite managing to do so. Still, over the years, more of the technologies that it was supposed to deliver have in fact finally appeared from Microsoft. All except one – and arguably the most important one – the "radically new" Object File System.

 

Now, the first beta of that has arrived in the form of WinFS. Channel 9 has a video interview with some of the developers, and a demonstration of some of the capabilities. The beta itself is currently only available to MSDN subscribers. I think it’s significant that the beta is available for Windows XP, and not confined to the next generation of the Windows operating system family, Windows Vista. But that does raise the question of what will be the value proposition of Vista, if all the major technologies (WinFS, WinFX) are also available for Windows XP.