![]() They each have a schema, and they have records. ![]() They’re simple, informal databases, yes, but they’re databases nonetheless. In other words, these are files that contain databases. Consider files that contain more than one phone-book entry, or more than one checking account entry, or more than one calendar entry, or more than one email message. dll files are good examples.)īut look at the kinds of data files that we use today-files such as Windows Address Book (WAB) files, Quicken files, Microsoft Outlook personal folder store (PST) files, Outlook Express files, and Internet Favorites. (I’m simplifying the scenario because the OS does understand a few kinds of binary files-.exe and. Its records-if it even was record-oriented-were demarcated in some way that the OS didn’t grasp, and the OS left it up to the developer who created the file to understand how to read, write, modify, and query its records. All the OS knew about a binary file was that it started at one place on the disk and ended at another place on the disk. Second, there were “binary” files, files that the OS essentially didn’t understand. The OS understood that these files contained lines of text information, and every line was separated from every other line by a carriage return and a line feed. First, there were “text” files, which restricted their contents to readable ASCII (or Unicode) characters, carriage returns, and line feeds. ![]() But as far as the OS was concerned, only two kinds of files existed. dll), word-processing files (typically just ASCII text or something similar), or spreadsheet files. In the early days of PCs, most files were either text files (e.g., readme.txt, program documentation, BASIC source code-one of the most common forms of programs at the time), executable files (e.g. But let’s take a closer look at what files are and what we use them for. Since the days of DOS, Microsoft OSs have treated hard disks the same way: partition them into volumes named after letters of the alphabet (e.g., C) and put just two kinds of items on them-files and folders. Now, I’d like to look at the change-the-world part of WinFS: non-file items. However, in those articles, I discussed only the merely attractive components of WinFS. In “What’s So Great About Longhorn?” (InstantDoc ID 45479) and “Requiem for WinFS” (InstantDoc ID 45630), I wrote about why Longhorn without WinFS is a bad idea.
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