It’s really too bad that MS has dropped WinFS, to be more specific they have opted to return it to being a database technology. To me the most interesting aspect of WinFS was the promise of have a user defined meta layer (tagging) on top of the file system. This would have created great opportunity for new applications to be developed on top of Windows and realized the goal of having the most innovative applications on your platform come from companies other than your own.
Microsoft abandons the idea of a standalone WinFS:
So if end users won’t notice any difference in Vista’s abilities, what has been lost by WinFS’s repositioning? The people most impacted are developers who were hoping to create new applications that utilized WinFS technology across multiple applications.
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