LINQ and Entity Framework Posts for 5/16/2008+

Note: This post is updated daily or more frequently, depending on the availability of new articles.

Danny Simmons on Why use the Entity Framework?

My Danny Simmons Answers the Frequently Asked Question: Why Use the Entity Framework? of May 18, 2008 analyzes Danny's answer and agrees with his conclusions, as do Jon Papa, Julie Lerman, and Jonathan Carter (so far).

Added: 5/18/2008

Location of Missing ADO.NET Data Services AJAX Client Library

My "Manipulate Data in the Cloud with ADO.NET [Data Services]" story for Visual Studio Magazine's May 2008 issue mentions the ADO.NET Data Services AJAX Client Library but doesn't give its location, which is ADO Data Service AJAX Client Library on CodePlex.

For a guided tour of using the AJAX Client library, try Jonathan Carter's ADO.NET Data Services Part 6: AJAX post.

Added: 5/18/2008

Mike Taulty Duplicates My Problems with VS 2008 SP1 Beta Installation

Mike Taulty had the same problem I encountered with my first installation of the VS 2008 SP1 Beta bits: Indication of a successful install followed by no templates for ADO.NET Entity Data Model or ADO.NET Data Services. (See the "VS 2008 SP1 Beta Didn't Install on My Primary Development Machine (but Said It Did)" topic below.)

Mike's VS 2008 Service Pack 1 - Docs and Installation post of May 18, 2008 tells the gory tale.

ADO.NET Program Manager Sanjay Nagamangalam has some suggestions for three problem scenarios in this VS2008 SP1 Beta fails to add "new item - ADO.NET Entity Data Model" Item Template thread in the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (Beta) forum.

I decided, like Mike, to start over from scratch by removing my VS 2008 RTM installation and the entire Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0 folder. I also removed the previously unremovable KB949325 and KB945855 HotFixes manually by deleting all their Registry references. Reinstalling VS 2008 RTM and SP1 Beta proceeded without a hitch and ADO.NET Entity Data Model and ADO.NET Data Services templates and libraries appeared and worked as expected.

Added: 5/18/2008

Aghy Continues Her LINQ for SharePoint (LINQ4SP) Series

The LINQ4SP - Create new list item post of May 17, 2008 describes how to create a new SharePoint list item for an AdventureWorks Products list.

Quintin Clark and Jon Udell: WinFS Contributions to Entity Framework and SQL Server 2008

My Jon Udell Interviews Quintin Clark on WinFS's Downstream Effects: Entity Framework and SQL Server of May 16, 2008 contends that Entity Framework and LINQ to SQL descend from Object Spaces, not WinFS.

There's no question, however, the WinFS was the driving force behind SQL Server 2008's filestream and HierarchicalID datatypes.

Bill McCarthy Finally Gets VS 2008 SP-1 Beta to Install

Bill describes the agonizing process he used to get VS 2001 SP-1 Beta to install in his The trials and tribulations of installing VS 2008 SP1 post of May 16, 2008. I wasn't so lucky as the following post reports.

VS 2008 SP1 Beta Didn't Install on My Primary Development Machine (but Said It Did)

My Failed VS 2008 SP1 Beta Installation Indicates Success post of May 16, 2008 describes the trials and tribulations with an install that reported success but didn't install the DDLs and templates for ADO.NET Entity Framework or ADO.NET Data Services.

I filed a Connect bug report on May 14, 2008 and enclosed a rollup of all logs. As of May 17, 2008, all I've received is the standard "Dear John" letter:

Thanks for your feedback. We are escalating this issue to the appropriate group within the Visual Studio Product Team for triage and resolution. These specialized experts will follow-up with your issue.

Thank you,
Visual Studio Product Team

Update: May 18, 2008

I fixed the problem by removing and reinstalling VS 2008 RTM and SP1 Beta bits. See the earlier "Mike Taulty Duplicates My Problems with VS 2008 SP1 Beta Installation" topic.

Jim Wooley Discovers an Anomaly in VB's Anonymous Type Property Ordering

His Anonymous Type property ordering in VB post of May 16, 2008 notes that VB orders anonymous types alphabetically, while C# orders them in the sequence of declaration.

Hadi Eskandari Uses LINQ to Enhance WPF INotifyPropertyChanged Implementations

Iranian developer Hadi Eskandari describes in his Enhanced INotifyPropertyChanged post of May 16, 2008 the use of the GetPropertySymbol extension method to extract member names from a lambda expression in a PropertyChangedEventHandler that implements INotifyPropertyChanged.

Hadi's approach is based on Jafar Husain's early Symbols in C# 3.0 post of March 2, 2007.

John Papa Posts a Teaser for His Forthcoming Data Access with Silverlight 2 Book

Silverlight Consuming REST Services of May 16, 2008 explains combining REST APIs with LINQ to XML:

So raw XML comes barreling into your Silverlight application asynchronously, LINQ to XML makes it fall in line, and its bound to where it needs to go via XAML.

Sending data back via REST is also very cool. I've got that working now too. ... Interacting with REST from Silverlight applications is just one piece of the data access puzzle, but its pretty cool.

How about a source code preview, John?

Bill Wagner Has a New C# Book in the Works

His Rough Cuts available for "More Effective C#" post of May 16, 2008 says:

I've been working quite a bit on my next book:  More Effective C#. It's getting closer, and it's now available on Rough Cuts.  Rough Cuts is a Safari Books Online service that provides you with pre-publication first access to upcoming books.  Chapters 1 & 2 are up right now. 

You can see more about the Rough Cuts program here: http://safari.informit.com/roughcuts

More Effective C# is here:  http://safari.informit.com/9780321580481

Alex James Explains the Pros and Cons of the Multiple EntitySets per Type (MEST) Model

Multiple EntitySets per Type is a model that few, if any, other object/relational management (O/RM) tools offer. In his MEST - What is it and how does it work? post of May 16, 2008, Alex describes how MEST works graphically by deriving GoodCustomer and BadCustomer entities from a base Customer entity.

He also describes the morass you enter when the GoodCustomers and BadCustomers EntitySets have two-way associations with Orders, OrderLines and Products EntitySets. Alex says:

• The EntityFramework in V1 just can't handle this ambiguity.
• Going forward we are trying to work out how to handle this situation gracefully.
• Still today the only workaround is to duplicate the whole graph.

Bob Beauchemin Explains VS 2008 SP1's Enhancements to ADO.NET Sync Services for Change Tracking with SQL Server 2008.

Bob's SQL Server 2008 Change Tracking and Sync Services ARE made for each other... in VS2008 SP1 post of May 16, 2008 is a paen to a new feature of VS 2008's Sync Services Designer:

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta contains direct support for using SQL Server 2008 Change Tracking. When you use ADO.NET 1.0 Sync Services with a SQL Server 2008 database, the Sync Services designer (that's Add/New Item/Local Database Data Cache) adds a checkbox that allows you simply to "Use SQL Server Change Tracking". No extra triggers, no tombstone tables, change tracking does it all for you. Visual Studio generates some scripts to enable change tracking at a database level and at a table level for the tables you select.

He then goes on to discuss generated code to warn users who don't resync frequently enough and SQL Server Books Online's recommendation to use Snapshot isolation with this feature.

This feature is likely to enhance SQL Server 2008's participation in Live Mesh projects.

Dinesh Kulkarni Continues his LINQ to SQL Server Tips Series

LINQ to SQL Tips 7: Using stored procs that return multiple results of May 16, 2008 is the latest episode. Following are links to earlier posts:

• LINQ to SQL Tips 4: Use DeleteOnNull if you want to delete object with null FK
• LINQ to SQL Tips 3: Deferred (lazy) or eager loading of related objects with stored procs
• LINQ to SQL Tips 2: how to use common base class for all entities
• LINQ to SQL Tips 1: how to map an enum

The mystery is where are Tips 5 and 6?

Om Malik Presenting Cloud Computing Conference June 25, 2008 in San Francisco

A Web technology isn't real until it has its own conference. Om's Structure 08 Conference subtitled "Put Cloud Computing to Work" will be held at San Francisco's new Mission Bay Conference Center of June 25, 2008.

Among the speakers will be Werner Vogels (Amazon VP, CTO and keynoter), Microsoft's Debra Chrapaty (Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Global Foundation Services), and Christophe Bisciglia (Google Sr. Software Engineer).

Why should we ‘Refresh the Net’? is a sidebar that purports to offer "more about the topics and issues at Structure 08 from community thought leaders."

Technorati tags: Visual Studio 2008 SP1, VS 2008 SP1, Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta, VS 2008 SP1 Beta, Entity Framework, Entity Data Model, EDM, ObjectSpaces, WinFS, Jon Udell, VB 9.0, C# 3.0, Silverlight 2, LINQ, LINQ to SQL, SQL Server Data Services, SSDS, Cloud Computing, SQL Server 2008, Sync Services, Microsoft Sync Services, LINQ4SP, Live Mesh

Jon Udell Interviews Quintin Clark on WinFS's Downstream Effects: Entity Framework and SQL Server

An assignment with the WinFS team was a career-killer for many Microsoft folks, but Quintin Clark lived to tell the tale in his 54-minute Channel10 interview with Jon Udell: Where is WinFS now? Quintin's now a general manager of the SQL Server team.

WinFS and the ADO.NET Entity Framework

Quintin says the following (in part) about WinFS and ADO.NET Entity Framework (EF):

The WinFS APIs were a precursor to a more generalized set of object/relational APIs, which is now shipping as what we call entity framework in ADO.NET.

What's getting delivered as part of VS 2008 SP1 is an expression of that, which allows you to describe your business objects in an abstract way, using a fairly generalized entity/relationship model. In fact we got best paper at SIGMOD last year on the model, it's a very good piece of work.

So you describe your business entities in that way, with a particular formal language...

The true precursor to EF (and LINQ to SQL) was ObjectSpaces, which surfaced as a technical preview named "Orca" (for Object/relational component architecture?) at the 2003 PDC, as I recall the year. An Orca beta was scheduled for Whidbey (Visual Studio 2003 beta) but canceled, and included in Orcas (Visual Studio 2005) beta 1 but removed from beta 2 and later. Finally ObjectSpaces was subsumed by the "black hole of Object Spaces" to the chagrin of its management team, primarily Luca Bolognese and Matt Warren.

I discussed in my Matt Warren's "The Origin of LINQ to SQL" post of May 31, 2007 Matt's outspoken The Origin of LINQ to SQL post of May 31, 2007, as well as architect Michael Pizzo's long comment to my Defining the Direction of LINQ to Entities/EDM post of May 29, 2007, part of which reads as follows:

It’s an undeniable fact that Microsoft has fumbled the ball repeatedly when it comes to delivering an O/R solution. The biggest reason we didn’t ship ObjectSpaces was not technical, but rather a lack of recognition at a management level of the importance of providing such a solution. The only way for ObjectSpaces to gain traction was by aligning with something bigger (i.e., MBF or WinFS). The biggest thing that’s changed (thanks largely to the success of Hibernate) is that management now gets the importance of a good O/R solution. The support for LINQ, LINQ to SQL, and the Entity Framework at the executive level is what ObjectSpaces never enjoyed, and what gives me confidence that we will finally shed the albatross that’s been hanging around our neck since .NET Framework 1.0.

I also included a link to Dare Obasanjo's Surviving WinFS: How LINQ to SQL Came to Be post of the same date.

My lengthy June 26, 2006 Microsoft Bites the Bullet: WinFS Bites the Dust post delivers the grisly details of the deaths of WinFS, ObjectSpaces, Project Green, and the MBF.

SQL Server 2008's FileStream and HierarchyID Datatypes

Quintin says this about SQL Server 2008's filestream datatype, inter alia:

That approach was so good that we decided to generalize it for SQL Server 2008, as a feature called filestream. It's basically a new kind of blob support for the database. You configure a column for filestream, you can take a file and insert it as a record, you get back a file handle, you can stream things into that file handle. You can do queries and get back file handles, and get streaming API-level NTFS performance on the files you put in there.

and the HierarchyID datatype:

So hierarchical ID is a column type that teaches the optimizer about hierarchy, about path, so you can do queries that find all the things contained within this part of the path.

So we have that feature also shipping in 2008, and there are all sorts of different uses for it. For example, people use it for compliance. They'll create a hierarchy of different confidentialities and compliance levels. This thing is confidential, which is a superset of things that are executive-eyes-only. Hierarchies like that are just out there in the world.

The filestream and HierarchyID datatypes will be much more useful when the SQL Server team incorporates them in the same namespace, as Quintin promises for SQL Server vNext.

Update 3/16/2008: Tim Anderson's WinFS reborn: SQL Server as a file system of May 16, 2008 contains this interesting tidbit:

Put [filestream and HierarchicalID in the same namespace] together with the work Microsoft is doing on synchronization, and you get offline capability too - something more robust than offline files in Vista. Clark says SharePoint will also benefit from SQL Server’s file system features.

Note that Live Mesh does some of this too. I guess SQL Server is there in the Live Mesh back end, but it strikes me Microsoft is at risk of developing too many ways to do the same thing.

Tim had the foresight in his Tech Ed reflections post of November 8, 2007 to make the connection between SQL Server 2008's filestream datatype and SharePoint performance, as well as to recognize early on the potential of ADO.NET Data Services.

Technorati tags: Jon Udell, Entity Framework, Entity Data Model, EDM, ObjectSpaces, LINQ to SQL, LINQ, WinFS, SQL Server, SQL Server 2008, filestream, HierarchyID, SharePoint, Live Mesh, Sync Services, Microsoft Synchronization Services

Matt Warren's "The Origin of LINQ to SQL"

Read the inside story of how LINQ to SQL and LINQ itself came to be, learn how ObjectSpaces was drawn into the black hole of WinFS, and discover that Microsoft's second attempt to productize an object/relational mapping (O/RM) tool started "the political nightmare that became [Matt's] life for the next three years."

The first major event after the Microsoft Business Division (MBD) absorbed the Server and Tools Business (STB) unit was to deep-six this year's Professional Developer's Conference. What's next on MBD's chopping block?

• LINQ to SQL?
• LINQ to Entities, Entity Framework, and Entity Data Model?
• LINQ itself?

Update: 6/2/2007: ADO.NET Architect Mike Pizzo states in a comment to my May 29, 2007 Defining the Direction of LINQ to Entities/EDM post's items #1 and #4:

The bottom line on Entity Framework and LINQ to SQL was that they are each designed around a different set of priorities; LINQ to SQL is designed around rapid development, with direct (1:1) mapping, while the Entity Framework is designed around exposing a rich conceptual model with flexible mappings to extended ADO.NET Data Providers. We considered not shipping one or the other of these to reduce confusion, but ultimately decided that neither stack fully addressed the customer commitments and expectations set by the other. So we will ship both; LINQ to SQL in Orcas and the Entity Framework in an update to .NET Framework 3.5 in first half 2008. Over time we will look to customers to help us decide whether it makes sense to continue to invest in enhancing both stacks or merging into a single stack over time.

It’s an undeniable fact that Microsoft has fumbled the ball repeatedly when it comes to delivering an O/R solution. The biggest reason we didn’t ship ObjectSpaces was not technical, but rather a lack of recognition at a management level of the importance of providing such a solution. The only way for ObjectSpaces to gain traction was by aligning with something bigger (i.e., MBF or WinFS). The biggest thing that’s changed (thanks largely to the success of Hibernate) is that management now gets the importance of a good O/R solution. The support for LINQ, LINQ to SQL, and the Entity Framework at the executive level is what ObjectSpaces never enjoyed, and what gives me confidence that we will finally shed the albatross that’s been hanging around our neck since .NET Framework 1.0.

I'd venture a guess from the tenor of his post that Matt's "political nightmare" of the last three years will be sweet dreams compared to the future under MBD's aegis.

Don't miss it.

Note: Dare Obasanjo ends his Surviving WinFS: How LINQ to SQL Came to Be post on this positive slant:

This takes me back. I had friends who worked on ObjectSpaces and it was quite heart breaking to see what internal politics can do to passionate folks who once believed that technologies stand based on merit and not who you know at Microsoft. At least this story had a happy ending. Passionate people figured out how to navigate the internal waters at Microsoft and are on track to shipping a really compelling addition to the developer landscape.

I'm a strong proponent of LINQ to SQL as an alternative to the delayed and overweight Entity Framework, so I hope Dare's right. I'm concerned, however, that LINQ to SQL, whose origins are in the C# team, might be sacrificed on the alter of the ADO.NET team's Entity Framework.

Backstories from the OakLeaf Blog

A Ribbon UI for Visual Studio Code Name Orcas?

SQL Server "Katmai" to Deliver Entity Data Platform and Support LINQ

Déjà Vu All Over Again: Entity Framework Cut from Orcas

Orcas December 2006 CTP Coming with New LINQ/EDM Bits

Technorati tags: LINQ to SQL, ObjectSpaces, WinFS, LINQ, Entity Framework, Entity Data Model, LINQ to Entities

Microsoft Bites the Bullet: WinFS Bites the Dust

The demise of WinFS—recounted by Quentin Clark's "WinFS Update" and "Update to the Update" posts in the WinFS team's "What's in Store" blog—shouldn't have surprised anyone. WinFS is only the latest in a chain of Microsoft's abandoned enhancements to—or replacements for—the New Technology File System (NTFS) and aborted implementations of object-relational mapping (ORM) technologies. Microsoft's Paul Vick calls them "Black Hole Projects" and provides a detailed list of their typical characteristics. I've been following—and writing about—the primrose path to the Object File System (OFS) and its successors since 1993. In a Guest Opinion titled "Is Visual Basic Ready for Client/Server Prime Time?" for the October/November 1993 issue of Fawcette Technical Publications' Visual Basic Programmer's Journal (later to become Visual Studio Magazine), I wrote:

Creating VB database front-ends by pasting together objects stored in a repository database probably will have to wait for Chicago (Windows 4.0?) or Cairo (Windows NT 4.0?) and Microsoft’s newly rumored object database for Windows NT, code-named Cumulus.

The choice of Cumulus as the codename for Windows NT's always-forthcoming OFS isn't surprising when you consider the Cirrus was the codename for Microsoft Access 1.0, which Microsoft released in November 1993 at Fall Comdex. As it turns out, Stratus probably would have been the better choice because OFS bought the farm after scud-running once too often.

OFS, RFS, Storage+ and Windows DNA

OFS morphed to the Relational File System (RFS, more commonly called Storage+) in 2000 when the successor to Windows Server 2003 was codenamed Blackcomb. Storage+, COM+, and Forms+ were to be the foundation of Windows DNA (Distributed Network/iNternet Architecture). Paul Thurott published a detailed history of OFS, RFS and Storage+, plus commentary on WinFS in his August 2005 "Windows Storage Foundation (WinFS) Preview" article. Paul's July 1999 "COM+, A Windows 2000 technology showcase" article (updated March 2000) describes Microsoft intentions for Storage+, COM+, and Forms+. Paul had this to say about Storage+:

Storage+ will do away with the NTFS file system and replace it with a new relational, object-oriented file system based on SQL Server 8.0. Expected to arrive with the next version of Business Windows (post-Windows 2000, think 2003 or 2004), Storage+ will turn the file system into a relational database, speeding searches and providing a higher level of granularity for those searches. It will also have the wonderful side-effect of finally ridding us of those limiting drive letters.

An SQL Server 2000 (8.0)-based Storage+ never appeared and there's no liklihood that future WinFS features will be derived from SQL Server 2005 (9.0). Ed Brill found SQL Server déjà vu in Bill Gates' September 2005 association of WinFS with "Katmai," the codename for SQL Server v.Next, and Steve Ballmer's December 2000 statements about WinFS and "Yukon," the code-name for the long-delayed SQL Server 2005.

One of the comments about Brill's post leads to an August 29, 2005 WinFS Team post by Peter Spiro, "the General Manager in SQL Server responsible for the WinFS team," that ends with:

A few years back Ray Ozzie came to Microsoft to speak at an internal workshop we have called WHiPS (Workshop on High Performance Systems). Ray talked about Groove. It was a pretty cool app trying to be a platform (tough to do for a small company). As we were talking after his presentation he described how he had to first build a platform on top of the operating system, which then enabled him to build the app that he had envisioned.

He said he needed storage beyond just a file system; he needed synchronization capabilities to share information between different machines/users, he needed advanced security mechanisms, he needed a way to model his particular schemas in the storage system, he needed to search on the information. So he built a richer storage system that incorporated these types of concepts and then he built the Groove app on top of his platform. His comment to me was that Microsoft should build such a platform and stop selling the same old operating system and storage capabilities that we as an industry have been polishing for 20-30 years. He felt this richer platform would create a new ecosystem that allowed a variety of new apps to be developed. He was right; and I told him we had already started on it, and that it was called WinFS.

As of June 15, 2006, Ray Ozzie became Bill Gates' replacement; and he's called Microsoft's Chief Architect.

Eight days later WinFS is dead.

Déjà vu all over again: Project Green, MBF and Object Spaces

Apropos Paul Thurott's mention of "Business Windows," how many members of the computer press and .NET-oriented book writers fell into the "Project Green" trap before Microsoft abandoned the Microsoft Business Framework (MBF) in October, 2005? My initial table of contents for Expert One-on-One Visual Basic 2005 Database Programming included an entire section devoted to ObjectSpaces, the OPath query language, and MBF. Much to my surprise ObjectSpaces and all references to MBF disappeared in Whidbey Beta 2, as I reported in my September 14, 2005 "The Language Integrated Query (LINQ) Project" post:

[Luca Bolognese, a prime mover on the ObjectSpace team, announced at Tech•Ed 2004] that ObjectSpaces had acquired a dependency on WinFS and thus was postponed to the Longhorn/Orcas timeframe. (He appeared close to tears as he made the announcement.) The dependence of the long-delayed Microsoft Business Framework (MBF) API on ObjectSpaces as its object persistence platform probably was a contributing factor to the demise of ObjectSpaces [and MBF support] in VS 2005.

Microsoft Watch's Mary Jo Foley quoted Satya Nadella, Microsoft Business Solutions corporate vice president, in her October 21, 2005 "Microsoft Scuttles Plans for Standalone Microsoft Business Framework" article:

[Nadella] said that Microsoft is planning to deliver all of the same MBF features and functionality it originally envisioned, but just in a different way.

"MBF won't ship as a separate entity. It has gotten factored into parts of our other deliverables," Nadella explained.

MBF technologies can be found in the Windows Workflow Foundation engine, the forthcoming Language Integrated Query (LINQ) project extensions to Visual Basic and C#; and the Common Data Platform (CDP) application programming interfaces; Visual Studio 2005; and "Orcas," the version of Visual Studio slated to follow Visual Studio 2005, Nadella said.

WinFS, Longhorn, and the Windows Data Platform Vision

Backing up to December 16, 2003, I wrote in my "Get a Grip on Longhorn" article for the February 2004 issue of Visual Studio Magazine:

The WinFS data model consists of Items, Relationships, and extensions. Items use an XML schema to define the metadata properties of everything that's stored in WinFS. The schema lets WinFS serialize Items as .NET objects, which you access with members of the System.Storage namespace. For example, System.Storage.Contact provides the context required to find, add, and delete Person objects, which have DisplayName, PersonalEmailAddresses, personalTelephoneNumbers, and several other predefined properties.

Relationships create joins between Item metadata values to return multiple Item types in query resultsets. For example, you can relate an Office document's Author property to a Contact Item's DisplayName property. A natural-language search returns links to matching document and contact Items. Extensions let you add new properties to an existing item's XML schema. Other WinFS features include Notifications, which let users subscribe to events raised by Item-related changes.

Synchronization between WinFS stores on multiple machines takes place through a "community folder" that's associated with groups of Items on local machines. Synchronization replicates Items between machines according to instructions contained in send-only, receive-only, or send-receive synchronization profiles. Information Agents automate actions for users based on WinFS data, rules, preferences, and contexts.

So 2-1/2 years later WinFS has gone the way of ObjectSpaces and MBF: Balkanized into Paul Flessner's Data Platform Vision, with some promised features to be integrated into SQL Server "Katmai", ADO.NET 3.0, and Visual Studio "Orcas."

Note: You can watch Jim Allchin—Microsoft's Group Vice President for Platforms—explain in an August 19, 2005 Channel9 video that "we now intend to deliver WinFS after the initial availability of Longhorn client. We continue to be committed to WinFS. It is expected to beta when Longhorn client is broadly available." Jim will have retired by the time Microsoft discovers the effect of the loss of WinFS on Vista sales.

DevX Executive Editor A. Russell Jones reported June 14, 2006 from Tech•Ed 2006:

WinFS Lives: WinFS, cut from the first version of Vista, isn't dead; it's still being improved. Shan Sinha, a Program Manager on the WinFS team, showed off the newest features, and promised a second beta later this year. WinFS wraps the tried and too-familiar NTFS file system in a relational database, providing new and revolutionary relational abilities to the Windows file system. Doing that has far-reaching implications, and presents huge technical hurdles. For example, a relational file system must manage its own indexes, backup, and recovery, and must do so both invisibly and with no human intervention (no database admin). Despite adding new and integrated file system capabilities, it must maintain file-level compatibility with earlier versions, so that existing programs don't break, and it must be able to maintain the new information and relationships across backups. From the demos though, it looks as if Microsoft has conquered the problems. In one demonstration, Shan destroyed the data on a disk sector, then walked the audience through the automatic recovery process. Very impressive. [Emphasis added.]

Peter Galli's June 27, 2006 eWeek interview with Corey Thomas, Microsoft group product manager for SQL Server, explains "Why Microsoft Pulled WinFS as a Stand-Alone Product" after three Tech•Ed 2006 presentations. Thomas adds a surfeit of spin but no mention whatsoever of Ray Ozzie.

Analysts and Bloggers Write WinFS's Obituary

Analyzing WinFS has consumed thousands of reporter-hours and untold barrels of electronic ink. Mary Jo Foley has been reporting the WinFS saga for Microsoft Watch since PDC 2003. Follow Mary Jo's WinFS breadcrumbs for the chronology of the "Rise and Fall of WinFS":

• 10/14/2003: "More WinFS Hints From Microsoft Tech Evangelist"
• 10/24/2003: "All PDC Roads Lead to WinFS"
• 10/25/2003: "Longhorn: Can Microsoft Deliver on Its Promises This Time?"
• 10/27/2003: "PDC: A Guide for the Perplexed"
• 10/28/2003: "WinFS Gets Its Day in the Sun"
• 04/09/2004: "More Twists and Turns on the Road to Longhorn"
• 04/15/2004: "Longhorn: The First Cut Is the Deepest?"
• 04/27/2004: "WinFS Axed From Longhorn Client and Server"
• 08/28/2004: "Allchin Defends Longhorn Decision to Microsoft Employees"
• 09/01/2004: "More Longhorn Fallout; More Technologies Delayed"
• 12/02/2004: "Microsoft Refreshes WinFS Beta 1
• 03/04/2005: "WinFS To Be Available on Windows XP"
• 03/09/2005: "Microsoft Wavering on WinFS on Windows XP?"
• 08/29/2005: "Microsoft Readying WinFS Beta Bits?"
• 08/29/2005: "Microsoft Makes WinFS Beta 1 Bits Available"
• 08/30/2005: "WinFS: More Handy Links"
• 12/27/2005: "The 10 Biggest Microsoft Surprises of 2005"
• 05/18/2006: "'Project Orange': The Killer App for WinFS?"
• 05/23/2006: "WinFS Beta 2: Think TechEd"
• 06/10/2006: "The Top Ten TechEd Hot Buttons"
• 06/12/2006: "Microsoft's New WinFS Challenge: Managing Live Services"
• 06/26/2006: "Microsoft Does a 180 on WinFS (Again)"

Note: You can watch Mario Juarez interview Mary Jo Foley at TechEd 2006.

Microsoft Monitor's Joe Wilcox's also has taken Microsoft to task for its WinFS peregrinations:

• 10/14/2003: "Teaching the Old File System New Tricks"
• 12/13/2004: "Yes, We're on the Road to Cairo"
• 12/13/2004: "The Road to Cairo is Built on Good Intentions"
• 06/26/2005: "Microsoft buries Cairo"

You also might want to check out Microsoft's Dare Obasanjo's reflections on WinFS and recent events:

• 10/31/2003: "On Jon Udell's Replace and Defend Theory"
• 11/09/2003: "Joe Gregorio on Longhorn vs. the Light of Day"
• 11/23/2003: "RSS, WinFS and Building a Universal Information Client"
• 11/24/2003: "Using the Right Tool for the Job vs. One Size Fits All"
• 02/17/2004: "WinFS as a Digital Media Store"
• 02/26/2004: "WinFS as a Unified Data Store"
• 06/08/2004: "Jon Udell and WinFS"
• 06/15/2004: "Objects vs. XML in WinFS Land"
• 06/26/2004: "WinFS and Metacrap"
• 09/25/2004: "Killing the "WinFS is About Making Search Better" Myth"
• 10/18/2004: "Apples and Oranges: WinFS and Google Desktop Search"
• 01/16/2005: "Desktop Search: Solving the Wrong Problem as Quickly as Possible"
• 06/24/2006: "Whither WinFS"
• 06/26/2006: "Some Thoughts on WinFS"
• 06/26/2006: "WinFS Update Post Clarified"
• 10/19/2006: "Top 5 Signs Your Project is Doomed"

Dare says in his last post cited above: "WinFS merging with Object Spaces is my canonical example of scope creep at Microsoft." The link is to Franz Brouma's May 22, 2004 post, which includes a comment from Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Tim Brookins. Tim had posted "MBF Joins the Longhorn Wave" on May 10, 2004 to explain why MBF would not be included in the VS 2005 (Whidbey) beta, as reported in InformationWeek's "Microsoft's Business Framework Gets Pushed Back" story of May 5, 2004 and CRN's "Microsoft Business Framework To Wait For Longhorn, Orcas" same-date article by Barbara Darrow.

InfoWorld's "Strategic Developer" columnist and chief blogger Jon Udell emphasizes the lack of support for Internet-based social networking in Cairo and WinFS, but doesn't buy analysts "WinFS is dead" pronoucements:

• 10/31/2003: "Replace and Defend"
• 11/21/2003: "A Tale of Two Cairos"
• 06/02/2004: "Questions about Longhorn, part 1: WinFS"
• 06/07/2004: "Questions about Longhorn, part 2: WinFS and semantics"
• 07/05/2006: "Evolving WinFS still needs to embrace the Web"

InfoWorld's "Enterprise Windows" columnist Oliver Rist entered the fray on June 29, 2006 with his "Microsoft kills the WinFS dream" article that's subtitled "Server admins' hopes fade as better Windows file system management goes the way of the dodo."

The DaVinci Code Effect: WinFS as Empty Holy Grail

Finally, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Todd Bishop quotes Bill Gates at PDC 2003 in his "WinFS: Microsoft's 'Holy Grail' file system still elusive" article:

WinFS -- this is unified storage. Some of you here have heard me talk about unified storage for more than a decade. The idea of taking the XML flexibility, database technology, getting it into the file system: that's been a Holy Grail for me for quite some time. And here it is." -- Bill Gates, October 2003.

As Todd Bishop observes, "Well, not yet, at least as a part of Windows."

[Updated June 27, 28, and 29, 2006. Minor changes and links added on July 1, July 5, and October 20, 2006.]

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