Surprise! Microsoft's WinFS beta arrives | InfoWorld | News | 2005-08-31 | By Eric Knorr

Surprise! Microsoft's WinFS beta arrives | InfoWorld | News | 2005-08-31 | By Eric Knorr: "The surprise beta release of Microsoft's (Profile, Products, Articles) WinFS file system on Monday has attracted intense scrutiny. WinFS was one of the three pillars of Microsoft's next-generation version of Windows announced two years ago, then code-named Longhorn and now morphed and downsized into Vista. All three pillars -- WinFS, the Avalon GUI, and the Indigo Web-services protocol stack -- have been detached from any specific forthcoming release of Windows and will be offered as separate technologies. Microsoft developers were happy to discover that the WinFS beta really does install on Windows XP and includes an array of supporting development tools. "