The return of WinFS back into SQL Server has re-ignited interest
in the somewhat forgotten “DBMS Engine hosted Unified Storage
System” vision. The WinFS project struggles have more to do with
the futility of “Windows Platform Monoculture” than the actual
vision itself. In today's reality you simply cannot seek to deliver
a “Unified Storage” solution that's inherently operating system
specific, and even worse, ignores existing complimentary industry
standards and the loosely coupled nature of the emerging Web
Operating System.
A quick FYI:
Virtuoso has offered a DBMS hosted Filesystem via WebDAV for a
number of years, but the implications of this functionality have
remained unclear for just as long. Thus, we developed (a few years
ago) and released (recently) an application layer above Virtuoso's
WebDAV storage realm called: “The
OpenLink Briefcase” (nee. oDrive). This application allows you
to view items uploaded by content type and/or kind (People,
Business Cards, Calendars, Business Reports, Office Documents,
Photos, Blog Posts, Feed Channels/Subscriptions, Bookmarks etc..).
it also includes automatic metadata extraction (where feasible) and
indexing. Naturally, as an integral part of our “OpenLink Data
Spaces” (ODS) product offering, it supports GData, URIQA, SPARQL
(note: WebDAV metadata is sync'ed with Virtuoso's
RDF Triplestore), SQL, and WebDAV itself.
You can explore the power of this product via the following
routes:
- Download the Virtuoso Open Source
Edition and the ODS
add-ons or
- Visit our live demo
server (note: this is strictly a demo server with full
functionality available) and simply register and then create a
“Briefcase” application instance
- Digest this
Briefcase Home Page Screenshot