codyg1985’s Think Tank

According to the WinFS team blog over as MSDN, there has been a major change in the direction of WinFS. Unfortunately, that change in direction means that WinFS will be cancelled:

These changes do mean that we are not pursuing a separate delivery of WinFS, including the previously planned Beta 2 release. With most of our effort now working towards productizing mature aspects of the WinFS project into SQL and ADO.NET, we do not need to deliver a separate WinFS offering.

WinFS started out as a proposal for a new file system for what was then Windows codename Longhorn. This new file system would be based on Microsoft SQL Server. Because the file system would be a database, data retrival and organization would be more efficient. Later on WinFS was scaled back to run on top of NTFS, the file system that debuted with Windows NT 4.0 and is used by default with Windows XP.

WinFS for Vista was then scaled back a year or so ago, and it would be released separately for Windows Vista and Windows XP. Now it appears that the project has been scrapped for parts.