Database File System 296
ozy writes "With all the fuss about searching and Spotlight and WinFS, check out the Database File System a completely different interface for your files, implemented in KDE. There is actually a request for developers to join a project to implement this under GNOME and leave how we use the desktop today behind."
gnome people... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:gnome people... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:gnome people... (Score:4, Informative)
The current release (0.2) is just some proof of concept, devels
are working on a nice'n'real solution.
Re:gnome people... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:gnome people... (Score:3, Interesting)
1) No "Start" application menu. You never "start" an application. You always open (read:look at) a document by clicking on it. You want to write a new one? you click on "template" document, it immediately asks you for new name (there never exists unnamed one, even on memory - because there is no difference between memory and disk). Do you want to read your
Backups, and being organized in a general way? (Score:5, Interesting)
Secondly, with this mass of files being spread over several disks, surely, this is in a way forcing the user to "search" for everything. Or isnt it? Will the underlying FS layer still be accessible in the general way that it is?
Re:Backups, and being organized in a general way? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Backups, and being organized in a general way? (Score:4, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Backups, and being organized in a general way? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Backups, and being organized in a general way? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, because the dbfs is implemented in userland. All applications will work as before, including ls.
I wonder if this could be made into a plugin for reiserfs 4.
Mark.
Backups (Score:3, Informative)
Search for: Documents
Modified since: last backup
I don't know about the other implementations but Searchlight and WinFS are implemented atop the existing filesystem. (The FS in WinFS supposedly stands for "Future Storage" and not "File System") Sort of like how Google is
Re:Backups, and being organized in a general way? (Score:3, Insightful)
Performance? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Performance? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can say the same thing for a GUI, and its correct for certain applications of computers, but wrong in others.
Re:Performance? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Performance? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this thing with DB's getting a little excessive? You're adding another layer and step to storing data which will in all likely hinder performance. I'm not sure the benefit out weight the cost.
Well, if it's only a name-translation thingy, then it shouldn't affect performance of file reading (when operating on sufficiently big files), only file opening/stat:ing.
Re:Performance? (Score:4, Informative)
What About Code Bloat? (Score:3, Interesting)
Adding a database layer to Gnome sounds like using another 300 megabytes of storage on my hard drive. I simply do not need the database.
If the FSF/GNU folks really want to do something revolutionary, they should fork Linux+Gnome into 2 distinct paths: minimalist and maximal
Re:What About Code Bloat? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Performance? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it adds 0.5 seconds to every time you save a file, but saves you 20 seconds of filesystem navigating every time you open the file, that's a worthwhile tradeoff. Add to that the fact that copmuters don't get tired or bored, while humans do, and it makes even more sense to shift as much of the burden of working onto the computer as is practical.
Re:Performance? (Score:2, Insightful)
Although this is a KDE related project the concept itself has nothing to do with whether you use a GUI or not and the performance hit comes at the level of the DB, not the GUI.
As for shifting the burden to the computer it doesn't really do much of that either as a human mind still has to formulate and input the query terms as well as judge the validity of the query result.
The DB as filesystem has a
Re:Performance? (Score:5, Insightful)
Storing data in a relational database is natural because it is more like the way we store data in our minds than the hierchical structures of traditional file systems.
Also, we allow a complete abstraction of the underlying database in relational systems. The database can store the data however it sees fit, and can arrange the data on disk without the users noticing a change.
I look forward to experimenting with a relational filesystem. I think it would be a wonderful thing to try out and see if it actually has the advantages I outlined above. I'd also like to see the actual disadvantages.
Re:Performance? (Score:2)
Interesting, but it does remind of the oft-repeated "There are no straight lines in nature." Seems when it comes to even the most mundane things like mowing the lawn, planting a garden, or vacuuming the rug, we seek out or create a our own straight lines to adhere to a requisite logic imposed to make sense of it all.
Put another way, it'
Re:Performance? (Score:2)
But seriously, you don't have to be smart to understand computers, you just have to think logically. Most of the time I find when people can't understand how do to something on the computer, it's because they expect the computer to act like a human instead of a machine. I think this is part of the problem with Windows--being aimed at the lowest common denominator, it's more concerned with working when used improperly than excelling at being used properly. Hack
Re:Performance? (Score:2)
[sarcasm]Yeah, you sure wouldn't want to gratuitously use the 99.5% idle time your desktop computer is currently wasting.[/sarcasm]
Actually, my sarcastic response isn't even right..this will only affect performance when you're searching for a file, or saving one. How much time do you really spend doing that?
Re:Performance? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now you can locate the notes by filetype, time/date, project, meeting, people, location, without entering any text by hand, just linki
"Implementing in GNOME" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Implementing in GNOME" (Score:2, Insightful)
Just my uneducated opinion.
Re:"Implementing in GNOME" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"Implementing in GNOME" (Score:4, Informative)
Problem with this logic is that not everybody is gonna use DBFS. For example: Some people would like to use Reiser4.
Proper thing would be dummy kernel (or some higher VFS, but making whole thing independant of wheter graphic mode is present or not) API for this kind of file access. If accessed FS is not DB related then it should convert standard functions (implementing some Metadata index on basic FS). If accessed system is Database FS then it should go trough it's native layer.
Who says that
MOVIES="*.avi *.mpg *.qt"
for ftype in $MOVIES; do
ls
aka.
select from fs where (path = '/mnt/volume/Personal/*') and ((path = '*.avi') or (path = '*.mpg') or (path = '*.qt'))
is different than
select from fs where ((type='movie') and (location='Personal'))
Second option could pose other options. Like searching by actors and directors, MP3 info, Office tags etc. But all open and save routines could be done trough and with Metadata. While Metadata and data would be connected.
Let's say I copy MP3 files from CD. CD is not DBFS. All my tags go down the drain. Hope you don't expect I will copy all files trough this daemon or in graphic mode at all. Just as on plain system as on DBFS.
Off course, it would help if VFS layer could detect MIME and act accordingly. Example: Old ISO9660 burned CD (or even better ssh mounted drive) with MP3. I copy these files to my computer remotely from terminal console on some other computer, computer being copied to, resolves ID3 and updates Metadata from ID3 tag index on fly. Without having some cron job.
Same thing goes for my Office files. All files have it's creator and it's description. Why wouldn't go in Metadata index when file is received and saved from e-mail. If this problem is not solved before implementation then all you can expect are holes in your Metadata with a lot of non-indexed data.
Well, that example is nothing new. Reiser4 already does that with plugins. The question here is:
Will everybody use Reiser4? NO
Will everybody write metadata plugin for Reiser4? NO
Will Gnome or KDE support Reiser4 directly? NO
Would this have better chance when Universal file access would be defined independent from FS and independant from Graphic mode? YES
GNOME has Beagle (Re:"Implementing in GNOME") (Score:2)
Re:"Implementing in GNOME" (Score:2)
Enough is a standard API so that Gnome and KDE can make a "File Open Dialog" for opening files.
Applications should have an "Open Recent" option anyway, or an option to open a browser with all files created by them.
Bottom line the term Database is IMHO missleading, or not needed. E.G. most iApps on a Mac have a root directory in the user home directory. In that directory they make a sub directory stucture like this: yyyy/mm/dd for each year, month and day where a f
stubborn (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:stubborn (Score:2)
Article doesn't address whether or not we can turn DBFS off and use the more traditional hierarchical method of file placement.
I would imagine the article author thought it was a given: we currently have choices of various file-systems, with no one FS requiring it be used to the exclusion of all others. I'd be highly surprised if DBFS was any different: people who want to use it will use it, and people who want to use Reiser4 will use that, and people who want to ext2 will use that.
Re:stubborn (Score:2, Insightful)
The DB tables are then implemented as special files that coexist nicely with the existing directory files.
Keep in mind that if a "new" file system breaks heirarchial file access is also breaks every app in existance.
too stubborn (Score:2)
Database filesystems REQUIRE traditional filesystems to write on top of (unless the SQL server is implemented IN the kernel, which everyone (and I) agree is too much bloat). So, for DESKTOP machines, and STORAGE SERVERS, this technology would rock. It improves the ability for a user to find his/her files effeciently.
Meanwhile, for mission critical systems, for the underlying systems, for EVERYTHING ELSE, they will continue using ordinary hierarchy file systems like Reiser.
Version control would be nice as well (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Version control would be nice as well (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like a job for an SVN plugin for Reiser4 file system. Anyone doing one already?
Re:Version control would be nice as well (Score:2)
I am definitly in favor of version control everywhere. Undo is arguably the best time saving feature ever, let's make an ULTRA-UNDO.
Exec 8 (Score:3, Informative)
This did mean that you had to use the right tools to get into the files or you had to cope with the changes in programs that worked on them.
VMS also had file revision numbers on files as a couple of posters have noted.
Both of these were nice in some ways, but
Re:Version control would be nice as well (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, ISO9660 really does support versioning. You can create files and add a version number using the ; seperator E.g. FOO.TXT;1 and FOO.TXT;2 etc. A compliant ISO9660 can either show you all of the available versions if your OS can cope with it or just chooses the latest version (E.g
Re:Version control would be nice as well (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting concept (Score:2)
Re:Interesting concept (Score:2)
WinFS does all that and more with automatic metadata promotion/demotion, synchronisation, and queries generated by virtual paths for legacy applications.
Re:Interesting concept (Score:2)
I notice you use the present tense. I was under the impression that WinFS is still in the vaporware stage?
Disadvantages (Score:5, Insightful)
How much disk space will you lose over this? All the metadata has to be stored somewhere, and just glancing over the link I read something about a versioning system, which will definently take up quite a bit of space. Will a 20gb hard drive become 15gb with DBFS?
Re:Disadvantages (Score:2)
Re:Disadvantages (Score:4, Insightful)
While performance is something that should always be kept in mind, we are a long way away from the days of the original Macintosh where a desk accessory had to weigh in at 600 bytes [folklore.org] in order to make the cut and fit into both memory and on a floppy disk. As current desktop machines outperform the high end servers of a few years ago, it would be nice to put a lot of that muscle to use in improving the user experience. I'm not excusing bloated and slow code here, but we don't really need to be counting bytes.
In any case, database based operating systems have been around for decades, from OS/400 to the BeOS. Many BeOS users claimed it was hands down faster than any other shipping OS at the time, and it featured a journaling, database-styled file system. One of the primary developers of that file system is now working at Apple on Mac OS X 10.4's spotlight functionality.
The thing is - as our desktop storage continues to grow at the pace that it does, and as we curiously find ways to fill it up, new ways of looking at and finding the information we store are going to be needed.
DBFS, Gnome Storage, Apple's Spotlight, and WinFS, all take different routes to get there. It's worth looking at all and what they offer and where they differ. WinFS, is a new storage layer that combines file system resources with more structured data in a Relational/XML hybrid system, with the aim (from what I gather) of turning the file system into a global "soup" of data. That sort of soup can be seen in office suites or PDA style applications, and in older Operating Systems like the Newton OS, where everything is a shared and available resource that is stored and available through common structures. Spotlight, on the other hand, combines file system searches and indexes (think 'locate') with full content indexes and a metadata index, which uses 'importers' to parse out other file formats. Spotlight is not a new file system, but an indexing system that acts on files in the file system. From what I remember of Gnome Storage, it is similar, using the VFS layer and Postgres triggers and callbacks, along with plug-ins, to parse and extract relevant metadata and contents out of files. DBFS looks to be like WinFS in that it purely wants to be a new kind of information store. I don't know which style will win out. My theory is that technologies like Spotlight will eventually evolve into a new kind of storage system, while remaining familiar and file based for todays users and developers. But this is an idea whose time has more than come. It's something that's been promised for the desktop for at least a decade, and has been shown to work, albeit in targeted OS's (the Newton) or ones that never achieved mass market penetration (BeOS).
So I think that performance concerns aren't that big of a concern, so long as (like all development) there are good people working on the solution.
AMEN, and slimware already exists and is debugged (Score:2)
Added to which, if someone wants "slimware", its already out there - it was written in 1995. If you are stuck with a 486, boo-hoo, fortunately there was a time when this was the cutting edge, and during that time people wrote and optimized code like lynx and fvwm and xview. So the code is there if you still need it, stop complaini
Reiserfs, storage and why do you want this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't Rieserfs planning to do this on the kernel level?
Where does that leave other fs choices and storage and other idea dbfs?
I see more and more people saying look what neat things you can do with these tools.
But really why do you personally want something like this?
Curious to see the response is all.
Re:Reiserfs, storage and why do you want this? (Score:4, Interesting)
- maintenance overhead on part of the user to create hierachy and maintain it. Every time you save a file you have to think "where do I put this?"
- Finding files can be hard. Is that letter about the planning application in Documents/Letters or Documents/Planning App?
- keeping files in two or more places at once is hard (as in the previous example). You can use softlinks, but that's hardly ideal and doesn't survive moving things around.
Basically, the current file system imposes a significant overhead. Most power users have restructured the way they work and use a computer in order to minimise that overhead without really noticing. It's just become one of those things you have to do, like remembering to save documents.
Why not shift the burden of organising the files onto the enormously powerful computer, rather than take up valuable human mental resources.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Sweet - now do it with DOC, PDF and JPG files (Score:2)
Re:Sweet - now do it with DOC, PDF and JPG files (Score:2)
And YES, I would expect people to actually remember to enter proper meta data for their documents. If not, then they don't get the benefits of this type of system.
Re:Sweet - now do it with DOC, PDF and JPG files (Score:2)
Re:Reiserfs, storage and why do you want this? (Score:2)
The point is, for most people the overhead of naming and organising files has become subconcious, and we have a bunch of tools to sort-of work around it. That doesn't mean an attempt to create a different sy
Re:Reiserfs, storage and why do you want this? (Score:2)
Re:Reiserfs, storage and why do you want this? (Score:2)
I guess the hoopla is mostly a Windows thing, where it is well nigh impossible to search for anything.
Essentially, in a hirarchical system you sometimes search for stuff, while in a DB system, you *always* search for stuff - big deal...
Re:Reiserfs, storage and why do you want this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Joe is pretty good about organization, so he names every MP3 properly with the group, album, and track names, plus the track number. (Something like The Beatles/White Album/01-Back in the USSR.mp3.) This way if he knows, for example, the track name but not what album it's on, he can find it pretty quickly using a method like yours.
The problem is if he wants to do something like put all the country music he has, for example, in a playlist. How does he do that? It can be done, certainly, but if he has a collection with several thousand MP3s it's so tedious and difficult as to be effectively impossible. What if he wants to listen to 60s rock? What if he wants to find a particular song he has, but all he knows is it's between 3 and 5 minutes long, came out between 2002 and 2003, and is probably categorized as either "pop" or "alternative?" What if he just wants a list of all the songs he never listens to because he's sick of what he's been playing lately? Or maybe he needs to free up disk space and wants to find out what he'll miss the least.
All these things are impossible to do in an efficient and timely manner using our current system. He can certainly use a command-line ID3 tagger to strip out the things he cares about, something like
but that's painfully slow: a second or two per file means a big connection will take 15 minutes or longer to scan, and if you typed "Gerne" by mistake you have to do it all over.Now if you had a filesystem-like object which could be smart and store ID3 metadata in the filesystem, then it would be much faster: the main overhead to using the find/xargs/id3tag/grep approach described above comes from having to seek through the MP3 file to get at the metadata. The reason this needs to be a "core OS component," perhaps even part of the kernel, is that MP3 tags can change at whim and the filesystem needs to know about it or its metadata can get out of sync. It's possible, but impractical, to update this on a periodic basis, like the locatedb; it makes much more sense to have the kernel inform some plugin "Hey, this file just changed, do you care?" And if the plugin does care, it can look at the changes, see if it's affected, and possibly update the metadata to match. It could also go the other way, where Joe updates the filesystem metadata and the OS knows to update the MP3's ID3 tags too.
Re:Reiserfs, storage and why do you want this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Reiserfs, storage and why do you want this? (Score:2)
"/Dread"
Comments by the Author (Score:5, Interesting)
Quote:There is of-course the hard choice of platform. I choose KDE? because I am familiar with QT a bit, and because it is inherently object-oriented, being C++ and all. But in my mind GNOME? is much closer to how I would like a desktop system to function. So I would like to go for the GNOME option. I leave KDE developers to do what they want with this, and I am offering them support. But I would like to focus my efforts on GNOME and implementing the above in GNOME.
Any volunteers?
In the first place we will need developers. Would you like to join, send me an email (o.gorter@student.utwente.nl) with DBFS and JOIN somewhere in the subject. If you are not a developer, but still would like to help, please revisit this page in a few weeks. There will probably be a community website by then somewhere.
What happen to the OODB? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sigh, Andrew Morton seemed to be right... (Score:5, Interesting)
(In the course of the heated discussion about Reiser4.)
SharePoint anyone? (Score:3, Informative)
As usual, Xerox came up with the concept years ago (DocuShare). Sigh.
Re:SharePoint anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:SharePoint anyone? (Score:2)
This is not a file system (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop letting goof ideas (Score:3, Interesting)
This looks like BLINKX plus more (Score:5, Interesting)
Normally I file things in a hierarchial method by year and month and by project name (2004file/9sep/) or (2004file/workfile/projectname), but still I lose track now and then and need keywords. Change the "slash" slant to fit your OS.
AVFS - A Virtual File System (Score:2, Interesting)
There are a debian package called fuse-source and fuse-utils. I.e. use all these nice kio plugins on filesystem level.
Just add
deb http://www.kalyxo.org/debian/ unstable main
deb-src http://www.kalyxo.org/debian/ unstable main
to your
apt-get update
apt-get fuse-source fuse-utils
Actually, I didn't test that yet. Someone else?
higher level of abstractions... (Score:4, Informative)
Considering there are numerious project of such higher level of file access abstraction going on, it does become a secondary choice for the user if they want to use one of these higher abstraction level file access systems.
To remove the traditional file system altogether would be a mistake, as then it could become a system of babel or keywords.... "what was I thinking when I created that keyword and lets not even get into what crazy joe was thining when he came up with his keywords...
But hey, given how MS based developers would create some obscure dll name and place it in some obscure location in order to copy protect
higher level abstractions are useful only to the point that you can, if need be, drop down in abstraction level to get your bearings as to where you are. If you cannot touch physical reality then how do you know you are not floating around aimlessly?
being out of touch with physical reality can evenm be very dangerious and hard to correct.
Shit.... (Score:2, Offtopic)
My internet connection uses their network, so it may become sluggish for some time, while the /.ing is in effect...
standard filesystems are NOT databases (Score:4, Interesting)
but it is NOT a relational database: you CANNOT easily create or use an alternative index to your files.
that's what all the fuss is about.
some people mentioned here that they already organise their files. great. fantastic.
HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU?
and how long would it take to reorganise?
with a relational database, all your indexes are updated AUTOMATICALLY.
therefore, doing searches on a relational database filesystem (find me all music files with dates between last week and last month: SELECT * from files WHERE files.type = "music" and files.date NOW() - 7days
you _can't_ do that sort of thing on a traditional filesystem.
sure, you can emulate it by creating symbolic links all over the place, but what happens when a file is deleted or moved? you need to manage / relocate the symbolic links...
nah.
databases.
fantastic idea.
now can we have them as a kernel module, pleeease?
Re:standard filesystems are NOT databases (Score:3, Interesting)
you _can't_ do that sort of thing on a traditional filesystem.
Argh! Don't say things like that - someone will throw down a shell script which WILL do it (probably in one line) combining find, file, grep, perl/python and some other crap. Which, while it may work for some, entirely misses the real po
Re: (Score:2)
Read the article, read some history (Score:5, Interesting)
At a deeper technical level, nany of the questions asked here have historical answers or clues in The Design and Implementation of the Inversions File System [berkeley.edu]. The abstract reads:
Note that this paper was published in early 1993. Many of the issues it addresses are relevant to DBFS, and many of DBFS's advantages are foreseen by that paper. IMHO DBFS has chosen a direction that should have better performance than inversion, not to mention lower risk and easier failure recovery.Inversion was built on POSTGRES, which makes one wonder what happened to the source.
Don't hire him! (Score:2)
Ozy [utwente.nl] has worked on this in his time available as a student. If he gets a job doing something different, he might drop DBFS, and it might die a lonely orphan. Email [utwente.nl] him only with DBFS job offers, please!
whatever happened to the google desktop search? (Score:2)
(or was it from altavista?)
I can't see the gain. (Score:2, Interesting)
You can't get organisation out of nothing - you are just asking people to be organised in a slightly different manner.
An organised person can already work effectively in a filesystem with current tools. The fact that they are organised is the key.
A disorganised person is not helped as their metadata will be erratic or absent. In fact might they now have the capability to be even more disorganised?
As I see i
Apple's Spotlight (Score:5, Informative)
Any innovation is good (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't have too much trouble using a hierarchy file system. I keep my stuff pretty organized, but computers are supposed to save time, not create more problems. If this database can do a good job, I'll give it a shot.
storage baggage liquidation (Score:2)
please! not KDE vs. GNOME again (Score:3, Interesting)
Since all but the GUI are basic commands, it would seem sensible to have an underlying library with hooks for use by your choice of desktop manager.
Can we? Can we PLEASE? Huh? Can we? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm down with anything that makes the linux desktop experience a real linux desktop experience- not a pissass wannabe win95 experience or a solaris experience. There's so much cool stuff going on under the hood... but the thin candy shell feels lik
Hurd has similar facilities (Score:2)
The Hurd documents talk about everything from an "ftp filesystem" to ways to rewrite X. I can
Not Unix (Score:5, Interesting)
Whether or not you look at system files every day probably depends on what you are doing with your machine and what you consider "system files" to be. Moreover, this idea would seem to go entirely against the whole UNIX "everything is a file" philosophy which is supposed to be one of the great strengths of UNIX.
reluctance to change (Score:2)
Think about something as simple as USB technology. It was a great idea from the beginning, but we were all so used to "parallel for printers, serial for modems" mentality that we couldn't see into how useful and universal it could become. But how about today? Just about anything new can be given a USB interface.
Now I'm reading about all kinds of reservations a
David Blunkett eat your heart out ... (Score:2)
Shhh! Don't let David Blunkett [wikipedia.org] hear you! If he finds out that computers can do this, he will make it illegal not to use keylogging.
SVN + DBFS + 10TB Nano Hoozie (Score:5, Interesting)
In the grand scheme of things, only a very small handful of us on earth are aware of Linux or even know what an Operating System is for that matter. File systems seem to be the big stumbling block for new users. Anything that can make computers and therefore access to information easier for the coming waves of new computer users (maybe billions of people?) will be a good thing. Even if the "bloat" slows down the system by 10%.
I hate to preach but that old quote comes to mind "With great power comes great responsibility". I don't think most of the people working on the OS that will soon dominate in developing nations (that's Linux) are aware of the harm they can do by slowing down Linux development with petty personal disputes. Like it or not, Linux is no longer just an edgy hacker tool. It has the potential to change the lives of Billions of people.
This is not a new idea..... (Score:3, Interesting)
mysql filebased access (Score:2)
Little research won't hurt (Score:3, Informative)
Storage is, suprisingly, method to store files decomposed to contents. The great searching ability is a side effect.
Imagine collaborating in of group of people over one document. Every one got some paragraphs to edit. With Storage, everyone can edit this document in the same time, seeing other's changes as letters are typed. Store version history and you have revision control. Throw in network transparency (you go to other department, connect laptop and automagically you can work on those department files) with OpenTalk (Zeroconf/Rendezvous) and you got best idea since hierarhical directories.
Be sure to read whitepaper about Storage available on mentioned site. Also check for Storage related entries in Seth's blog [gnome.org] (Seth is one architect of GNOME Storage). Now if only KDE people work on compatibility with Storage, freenix desktop would rule the world.
BTW, KDE, don't miss chance of integration! KDE is planning to introduce google-like search in desktop. Don't reinvent wheel! Beagle [gnome.org] is here, working. Just integrate Beagle with KDE desktop and we are set.
Jeez, when will these people learn? (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, WinFS, advertised as a way to make searching work by making the file system be a relational database, ignores the fact that the real way to make searching work is by making searching work. Don't make me type metadata for all my files that I can search using a query language. Just do me a favor and search the damned hard drive, quickly, for the string I typed, using full-text indexes and other technologies that were boring in 1973.
Re:File system in KDE... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why bother.... (Score:2)
In reality DBFS should only provide higher API besides standard one. And if desktop or application supports this API here's all of the functionality. If not plain FS access is all you get. In Gnome case gnome-vfs should detect and use DBFS, and in KDE probably the equivalent is KIOSlave.
Kernel should set some standard API for filesystems like DBFS and Reiser4 if not for other reason then to set starting access point for filesys
Why you don't want a DB-based FS (Score:3, Interesting)
blah blah blah (Score:2, Insightful)
Did you even care to RTFA?
This has nothing to do with the gnome or kde devs. Some developer invested his time to come up with something he thought was useful and all you can do is complain?
And if you look at the project, it is something completley different then a plugin for the admittedly great ReiserFS4 and it is here and usable right now.
So friggin stop your stupid whinig.
And to the mods who modded parent interesting
Btw., why don't you whine to the Re
Re:i don't have time to reinvent the wheel today (Score:2, Insightful)
I wouldn't normally jump in except this is modded +4, even though the poster doesn't appear to have read the article.
The article doesn't talk about an actual "file system" (it admits its a bit of a misnomer itself), merely a way of referencing files with "keywords" in database that, according to the aut