5 ms·

Would you have time to say a bit more about why WinFS failed from your point of view?

wrs 9y ago
Oh man, that would take a book. If I had to severely boil it down: You can have a beautiful unifying idea that seems to make total sense in the abstract, but then bog down completely when you have to make real implementation decisions in the context of a massive existing platform with a several-thousand-person development team. At some point a system's assumptions become so established that there are certain aspects that are literally impossible to change. Good intentions, even with the full support of the highest levels of management, can't resolve all the tangles.
nayuki 9y ago
There is a series of blog posts that gives a retrospective on WinFS: * https://hal2020.com/2013/02/14/winfs-integratedunified-storage-and-microsoft-part-1/ https://hal2020.com/2013/02/14/winfs-integratedunified-stora... * https://hal2020.com/2013/02/14/winfs-integratedunified-storage-and-microsoft-part-2/ https://hal2020.com/2013/02/14/winfs-integratedunified-stora... * https://hal2020.com/2013/02/25/winfs-integratedunified-storage-and-microsoft-part-3/ https://hal2020.com/2013/02/25/winfs-integratedunified-stora... * https://hal2020.com/2013/03/10/winfs-integratedunified-storage-and-microsoft-part-4/ https://hal2020.com/2013/03/10/winfs-integratedunified-stora...
- wrs 9y ago
  Wow, I forgot Hal practically did wrote a book. :) I was on the Windows Shell side, sitting in a lot of schema meetings where products couldn't figure out how to combine their incompatible complex existing schemas into one new WinFS schema that would be understandable to anyone, and in a lot of other meetings where I was sort of a negotiation translator, decoding user interface concepts for the SQL team and SQL concepts for the Shell team, though their priorities were wildly different. The common theme throughout was that it was pretty clear none of the product teams saw any reason they should go through unknown years of effort and compatibility hell, delaying the feature roadmap for their product, just to fulfill Bill's desire for this abstract notion of Integrated Storage. So these meetings went on interminably to make Bill and David and Bob and Jim happy, while none of the participants outside the WinFS team itself saw any point to the exercise. It was not a pleasant experience, but I learned a lot about how a large organization works! (A reason I'm no longer in one.)

wrs 9y ago

Oh man, that would take a book. If I had to severely boil it down: You can have a beautiful unifying idea that seems to make total sense in the abstract, but then bog down completely when you have to make real implementation decisions in the context of a massive existing platform with a several-thousand-person development team. At some point a system's assumptions become so established that there are certain aspects that are literally impossible to change. Good intentions, even with the full support of the highest levels of management, can't resolve all the tangles.

nayuki 9y ago

There is a series of blog posts that gives a retrospective on WinFS: * https://hal2020.com/2013/02/14/winfs-integratedunified-storage-and-microsoft-part-1/ https://hal2020.com/2013/02/14/winfs-integratedunified-stora... * https://hal2020.com/2013/02/14/winfs-integratedunified-storage-and-microsoft-part-2/ https://hal2020.com/2013/02/14/winfs-integratedunified-stora... * https://hal2020.com/2013/02/25/winfs-integratedunified-storage-and-microsoft-part-3/ https://hal2020.com/2013/02/25/winfs-integratedunified-stora... * https://hal2020.com/2013/03/10/winfs-integratedunified-storage-and-microsoft-part-4/ https://hal2020.com/2013/03/10/winfs-integratedunified-stora...

wrs 9y ago
Wow, I forgot Hal practically did wrote a book. :) I was on the Windows Shell side, sitting in a lot of schema meetings where products couldn't figure out how to combine their incompatible complex existing schemas into one new WinFS schema that would be understandable to anyone, and in a lot of other meetings where I was sort of a negotiation translator, decoding user interface concepts for the SQL team and SQL concepts for the Shell team, though their priorities were wildly different. The common theme throughout was that it was pretty clear none of the product teams saw any reason they should go through unknown years of effort and compatibility hell, delaying the feature roadmap for their product, just to fulfill Bill's desire for this abstract notion of Integrated Storage. So these meetings went on interminably to make Bill and David and Bob and Jim happy, while none of the participants outside the WinFS team itself saw any point to the exercise. It was not a pleasant experience, but I learned a lot about how a large organization works! (A reason I'm no longer in one.)