Microsoft has apparently scrapped its plans for WinFS Beta 2. The long-awaited search platform will probably be delivered in many parts, which will be rolled out separately into several different products.
WinFS, acronym for Windows Future Storage, was, in its early days, an integrated part of the Windows Vista operating system, then codenamed Longhorn. After many reports and feature changes, Microsoft had shipped Beta 1 of its storage engine in late august 2005.
What will become the technologies that were once called WinFS? It is unknown yet, along with the products they will ship with, except for the blog post a WinFS team member posted:
"These changes do mean that we are not pursuing a separate delivery of WinFS, including the previously planned Beta 2 release. With most of our effort now working towards productizing mature aspects of the WinFS project into SQL and ADO.NET, we do not need to deliver a separate WinFS offering."
This ends the engine's long life, which began in the late 90s under the name Storage+.
http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/viewstory.php?t=78451
WinFS Beta 2: Dead in the water 
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