From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262373AbTJ3LV5 (ORCPT ); Thu, 30 Oct 2003 06:21:57 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262375AbTJ3LV5 (ORCPT ); Thu, 30 Oct 2003 06:21:57 -0500 Received: from 153.Red-213-4-13.pooles.rima-tde.net ([213.4.13.153]:32263 "EHLO kerberos.felipe-alfaro.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262373AbTJ3LVz (ORCPT ); Thu, 30 Oct 2003 06:21:55 -0500 Subject: Re: Things that Longhorn seems to be doing right From: Felipe Alfaro Solana To: "Theodore Ts'o" Cc: Erik Andersen , Hans Reiser , Linux Kernel Mailinglist In-Reply-To: <20031030015212.GD8689@thunk.org> References: <3F9F7F66.9060008@namesys.com> <20031029224230.GA32463@codepoet.org> <20031030015212.GD8689@thunk.org> Content-Type: text/plain Message-Id: <1067512910.1228.3.camel@teapot.felipe-alfaro.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.4.5 (1.4.5-7) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 12:21:50 +0100 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, 2003-10-30 at 02:52, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > Keep in mind that just because Windows does thing a certain way > doesn't mean we have to provide the same functionality in exactly the > same way. > > Also keep in mind that Microsoft very deliberately blurs what they do > in their "kernel" versus what they provide via system libraries (i.e., > API's provided via their DLL's, or shared libraries). > > At some level what they have done can be very easily replicated by > having a userspace database which is tied to the filesystem so you can > do select statements to search on metadata assocated with files. We > can do this simply by associating UUID's to files, and storing the > file metadata in a MySQL database which can be searched via > appropriate userspace libraries which we provide. > > Please do **not** assume that just because of the vaporware press > releases released by Microsoft that (a) they have pushed an SQL Query > optimizer into the kernel, or that (b) even if they did, we should > follow their bad example and attempt to do the same. > > There are multiple ways of skinning this particular cat, and we don't > need to blindly follow Microsoft's design mistakes. > > Fortunately, I have enough faith in Linus Torvalds' taste that I'm not > particularly worried what would happen if someone were to send him a > patch that attempted to cram MySQL or Postgres into the guts of the > Linux kernel.... although I would like to watch when someone proposes > such a thing! In fact, the GNOME taskforce is already working on something much like the much-touted-but-nearly-inexistent WinFS. It's all done in userspace: http://www.gnome.org/~seth/storage/index.html