Nothing in this article on MSDN by Robert Grimes to contradict the predictions I made a couple of weeks ago. The following questions on WinFS remain:

1) How is all this metadata going to be entered? If entered automatically based on usage, how to make that entry open to all modes of use? For example, a web-based email program cannot be released "for longhorn" and therefore cannot carry the ability to update files with metadata (such as "sent to bob on 2/10").

2) How do the users update the metadata once it's in there? What happens to users who refuse to understand the concept of metadata and won't play along?

3) What does all this look like, when you're "looking at your file system" if there can be such a term?

This entire WinFS effort is just to answer the age-old question of "Where the heck is my file?" This question is asked by users, and answered by the OS. It's far less important that we have lovely "select from where" T-SQL running about. This is just one implementation. I am worried that the cart is before the horse here. Improve the technology, fine, but as a 10th generation product (windows) you have to provide a bridge to the old concepts.

I'll refrain from further criticism until I see some screenshots. (And no, not screenshots of the about box.)

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