Getting Data Into WinFS with WinFS Synchronization

re: Getting Data Into WinFS with WinFS Synchronization

TG2 — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 02:18:47 GMT

Neil, great article. I'd like to know more about how WinFS works over a marginal connection (one that's not always present or drops in the middle of the conversation). It's these boundry conditions that make my job interesting and I'm hoping that WinFS will help me solve some of them ;)

-tg2

re: Getting Data Into WinFS with WinFS Synchronization

Richard Kagerer — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 10:32:10 GMT

Neil,

Great article. But there's one little insidious scenario that comes to mind which you didn't touch upon - though I hope your team has addressed it!

Applications need a mechanism to mark data as up-to-date, without actually having to change it.

For example, say I'm out of the office for a week, and my assistant back at home base makes a change to the "category" field for a contact "Bill".

The next day I find myself with an hour to kill in the airport before my flight home. I decide to go through all the contacts on my smart phone to make sure the information is filed correctly. I decide the category for Bill should stay the same, and DON'T make any changes to his record.

When I get back to the office, the data syncs. A few days later I realize Bill is in the wrong category, and I'm a little upset that even though I reviewed the contact AFTER my assistant made the change, her change still overrode my review.

The idea is that sometimes the act of simply presenting the data to the user should count as an "update" transaction. Another example would be when an agent at a call center asks you to confirm your name/address details. Nothing is changed, but the old data should now be marked "newer" (and treated as updated - as of whatever time it was reviewed - during the WinFS synchronization process).

re: Getting Data Into WinFS with WinFS Synchronization

Arian Kulp — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 09:51:28 GMT

I'm curious about how WinFS will fit into the Windows Mobile universe. Storing data is no fun on any platform, but it's worse with mobile apps since it forces you to either silo the data on the device, write custom network sync mechanisms, or write custom IntelliSync mechanisms.

I'd love to see WinFS directly available for Mobile, with the ability to scope what data is propagated in both directions. Obvious types would be mail, contacts, tasks, and events. Even better though, if I create a killer app for keeping track of a movie collection, for instance, I should be confident that those entries will flow both ways. Is this already in the works? I hope it's retrofitted for PPC 2003!

Thanks!

re: Getting Data Into WinFS with WinFS Synchronization

Neil Padgett — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 00:36:04 GMT

Good questions everyone.

tg2, regarding marginal connections, WinFS Sync supports cancellation and resumption -- this support should make dealing with dropped connections relatively straightforward.

Richard, your scenario is supported -- I'll talk a little bit about how WinFS tracks changes and how WinFS Synchronization determines changes in a future post.

Thanks for reading.

re: Getting Data Into WinFS with WinFS Synchronization

Yi-Chin Tu (Ethan) — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 20:06:17 GMT

It sounds like a version control tools for all type of documents.

re: Getting Data Into WinFS with WinFS Synchronization

Richard Kagerer — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 00:43:20 GMT

Neil,

Thanks for your response. Looking forward to that new post.

re: Getting Data Into WinFS with WinFS Synchronization

Richard Kagerer — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 01:10:10 GMT

Neil,

Another quick question; it's about data ownership, from the perspective of both applications and users.

I've noticed that applications, in general, do a rather poor job of uninstalling all traces of themselves. Leftover tidbits can be simple, like settings left in the registry. But often they're more complex, especially when they tap into existing data stores - e.g. an app that creates custom fields in an Exchange data store rarely has a mechanism to uninstall those fields, and unwanted data may pollute the store for years to come after the program using it is history.

With WinFS, you guys are creating a big soup and mixing in ingredients (data) from all sorts of different vendors. My question is what happens once I want to remove one of those apps? I may want to keep some of the data it created (e.g. documents) but strip out any metadata that it's proliferated through my store.

One advantage of siloing is that an app's data tends to be fairly encapsulated (e.g. in the days of MS-DOS all you had to do was delete a directory) and it was easy to keep things clean.

1) Does WinFS include some mechanism to tie data/metadata to one or more applications, so that it will be removed when the application is uninstalled? (Or even a way to make the data travel with the application?)

2) Will there be tools provided to developers that make it incredibly easy to define which data should be treated which way? (So they don't just leave it at the default "leave these bits here forever", like often happens today with registry settings and installer log files)

Thanks,

-Richard

p.s. Arian: Great comments.

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