Why Microsoft Pulled WinFS as a Stand-Alone Product - ' Windows Live ' (
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There was a lot of talk at TechEd about how all the data generated by Windows Live services was complicating the idea of WinFS as a single relational store. Was that a contributing factor to move in the current direction?
The primary contributor to our decision was how best to enable the data platform stuff as embodied in SQL Server, so that was a primary driver and designed to meet customer needs. We get so much feedback about the struggle between structured and unstructured data and how they can be tied together as well. Customers have all this data in their database and all this information in files, all of which is actionable and critical to their systems and they want to know how they can bridge those together.
How will Windows Live services now be able to take advantage of the WinFS technologies?
This is something we are still working on. We think there are good opportunities in the information space, but this is something that is in process and that we are still looking at.
There is talk that this decision was in part based on the fact that the WinFS code was simply not up to scratch and the team needed more time to work on it rather than admitting beta two would take longer to be released than planned. Is there any validity to this?
Not really. You have to step through the decision-making process: Once we got the feedback and saw that there is a real customer pain-point in managing the data that is out there, then we have to look at the most impactful, large-scale way we can address that, and then you have to prioritize to deliver on that.
Given the huge role SharePoint is playing in Microsofts future, some say we will see many of the features that would have been found in the stand-alone WinFS show up there. Is that a fair assessment?
Well, SharePoint runs on top of SQL Server and there is lots of synergy between those two teams.
eWEEK Labs recently reviewed Office SharePoint Server 2007. Click here to read more.
But we look at SharePoint and SQL as a package of things together, and it is premature to talk about specific features being found in one rather than the other.
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