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Danny,
If the "official" response means anything (and in this particular case
the response was similar enough to the reason for dropping hailstorm
-- although in a completely opposite sense (e.g customers didnt want
MS managing their data, customers do want WinFS, its the delivery
schedule that caused an uproar by the hardware vendors)
In other words there was enough backlash from the hardware
manufacturers based on the release schedule that had WinFS as part of
Longhorn client in 2005/6 but not server until 2007 (if I am
remembering my dates (and reasoning for that matter) correctly) that
forced MS to step back and reevaluate...
What brought on the ultimate decision to decouple WinFS from Longhorn,
realizing it would devalue Longhorn in a HUGE way is anyones guess
(the rumors were spreading that there were fears it simply wouldnt be
ready for Lonhorn anyway.)
So, as far as I remember it correctly, WinFS from a client and server
standpoint will release at the same time (2007ish?) allowing hardware
manufacturers more time to prepare as well as the ability to keep the
release of hardware that would, I assume, add acceleration features
etc... that will drive the incentive to upgrade to the latest and
greatest etc...
As far as why not just tie into RSS 1.0/RDF -- Heres a couple of guesses...
Like it or not the "genius" behind the RSS 1.0/2.0 becoming separate
projects has got to be considered as not so appealing to the marketing
folks... while the rest of us may have it figured out we represent
MAYBE 1/100th of 1% of the entire population (4 million or so its
actually pretty high... my guess its even lower than that of those in
whom truly know what is what and why... actually even less know or at
least understand the why...)
Bottom line... the public thinks that RSS 2.0 is better than RSS 1.0.
For a marketing giant like MS to tie themselves with what would be
perceived as an older technology would not only be stupid -- people
would more than likely be fired because of it... thats the way it
works, like it or not.
Maybe the better question would be why cant the RSS 1.0 folks get
together with the RSS 2.0 folks and merge efforts -- I'm pretty
sure/confident I already know the answer to that question and its for
this reason that I believe Atom, when it releases in less than a few
months, will probably seem like a very appealing apple to bite into
given that it offers an end to end pub/sub system that ties all the
little loose ends that still remain untied in RSS land. I consider
the likes of Sam Ruby and Tim Bray et Al to be members of an elite
group who have taken a very smart approach since day one, building
sample apps in both C# and Java etc... to help propogate the idea that
Atom is not about platforms but, in many senses the Agnostic-Platform
if not the Anti-Platform his/her very self. While one could easily
suggest that Sam was being Sam (that is being smart about things) and
recognizing that you can't have a platform-nuetral specification
without building support for all major platforms it still doesnt hurt
the relationship by being extremely active and agnostic since day one
(at least as far as I can tell or would even know where to look)
One thing to add to this... Anyone who attended Chris Sells Applied
XML DevCon this last October in which Tim Bray Keynoted and Sam Ruby
gave a very depressing presentation on whats wrong with XML (at one
point even showcasing a live MSDN site that was victim to make his
point that the web is broken in all too many places -- problem was
fixed in less than 2 hours :) he then did all he could to brighten
things up by showcasing that Atom "Fixes all of this".
One can imagine the ratio of MS to non-MS type folks at a SellsCon.
You have to imagine this left an impression on each and every member
of the audience -- an audience unlike your typical DevCon in which the
attendees were not there to learn so much as to hash things out as to
whats wrong and how to fix it -- this of course was because the
audience consisted of the top developmnent engineers and decision from
across the industry.[1]
With another page and half post that I swear every time "never again!"
to write I will leave you with a link[1] to some of Derek
Denny-Brown's (I will assume everyone reading this doesnt need an
intro into DDB...) comments regarding RDF in general which might
further shed some light into the direction of "why not RDF" as it is
my guess that the folks on Redmond campus tend to listen to what
someone like Derek has to say...
While I expect nothing less than a holy war to erupt from the above
please forgive me if it takes a while to respond... Ive got a
deadline to meet this morning :D
[1] http://nothing-more.blogspot.com/2005/02/thinkn-aloud-about-rdf.html
For fun, heres some pics from that very same DevCon... I highly
recommend you attend this year[2] if you can!
> http://mdavid.name/m.david/pub/xml%2Ddevcon/
[2] http://www.sellsbrothers.com/conference/
NOTE: This was last years line-up and follow-up blog postings. No
doubt the new conference info should be soon avaialable.
On 6/25/05, Danny Ayers <danny.ayers@gmail.com> wrote:
> Probably the most significant differences between the Userland 0.9x
> fork and rss-dev's RSS 1.0 were that the former eschewed XML
> namespaces and RDF support.
>
> I think it was around 2001 the <enclosure> element was added to the
> Userland branch, allowing it to point to media files. This brought
> back one of the capabilities that went with RDF, where a resource is a
> resource, and you don't really need a new element when the mime type
> changes.
>
> Then when RSS 2.0 came along, it included namespace support - no
> namespace of its own, but namespaced elements could now be added.
>
> Yesterday Microsoft announced an extension [1] for RSS 2.0 that gives
> support for the list data structure, something else that RSS/RDF has
> been capable of for 5 years.
>
> Looks like a pattern's emerging...
>
> I was wondering if there were any other cases around where a spec
> avoided using something like RDF on religious grounds, then later
> crept back in exactly that direction. (Or if anyone knows whatever
> happened to WinFS...)
>
> Cheers,
> Danny.
>
> [1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/longhorn/understanding/rss/simplefeedextensions/
>
> --
>
> http://dannyayers.com
>
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--
<M:D/>
M. David Peterson
http://www.xsltblog.com
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