Metadata/database filesystem

Forum thread started by twinbee on Mon, 2010-12-06 16:54

What do people think on here about a metadata/database filesystem? Is there any plans or thoughts of plans for Haiku to use it, maybe as default?

IMHO, it would free us from the maintenance and pain associated with the standard folder-based system we all use. Here's an article I wrote years ago which shows the numerous advantages over the old way:

"Towards A Single Folder Filesystem"
http://www.skytopia.com/project/articles/filesystem.html

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Comments

Re: Metadata/database filesystem

by thatguy - 2010-12-06 19:25

Have you looked into the properties on the BFS used in Haiku ? its very much like a metadata/database file system.

Re: Metadata/database filesystem

by AndrewZ - 2010-12-06 20:27

I actually prefer this nicely written description of BFS on Haiku :-)
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/06/the-beos-filesystem.ars

Re: Metadata/database filesystem

by twinbee - 2010-12-06 20:39

Hi, if I'm being honest, I've only just found out that Haiku is available for download! (been occasionally visiting the site, but never saw the news story on Slashdot unfortunately). I've just read the page at: http://www.haiku-os.org/about and that mentions it too. Smashing stuff :)

I'm really hoping the implementation is similar to the one I have on my site above. Is searching a million files' metadata instantaneous (i.e. less than 0.1 seconds)? Is there a single 'window' which lists them all until filtered? Are programs set up by default to allow saving of metadata by the user (and is some automatically generated metadata added)? I would appreciate any feedback about the article - I really think the database system is the way to go. In the meantime, I'll set about installing Haiku on CD to try out.

Any thoughts on a Haiku emulator for Windows so that people can try it out more quickly, or would that ruin the lovely speed?

Re: Metadata/database filesystem

by richienyhus - 2010-12-07 00:34
twinbee wrote:

Any thoughts on a Haiku emulator for Windows so that people can try it out more quickly, or would that ruin the lovely speed?

Haiku works fine in virtualbox and VMware play on windows, although if you own a multi-core processor it would be a shame not to use the real hardware.

Re: Metadata/database filesystem

by thatguy - 2010-12-07 00:35

Some of what your suggesting is hardware limited. disk acess speeds and what not. Unless you loaded the metadata to the ram at system boot, even then you would still incur acess penaltys. I will say this. Haik u search is dumb fast. Faster then anything I have tried and I have a media drive loaded with music "50,000 songs" and it chomps through those files in a few seconds.

the OS can only work within the capability of the hardware.

twinbee wrote:

Hi, if I'm being honest, I've only just found out that Haiku is available for download! (been occasionally visiting the site, but never saw the news story on Slashdot unfortunately). I've just read the page at: http://www.haiku-os.org/about and that mentions it too. Smashing stuff :)

I'm really hoping the implementation is similar to the one I have on my site above. Is searching a million files' metadata instantaneous (i.e. less than 0.1 seconds)? Is there a single 'window' which lists them all until filtered? Are programs set up by default to allow saving of metadata by the user (and is some automatically generated metadata added)? I would appreciate any feedback about the article - I really think the database system is the way to go. In the meantime, I'll set about installing Haiku on CD to try out.

Any thoughts on a Haiku emulator for Windows so that people can try it out more quickly, or would that ruin the lovely speed?

Re: Metadata/database filesystem

by starsseed - 2010-12-07 12:56

Without being nasty, your article is just a bit late(10 years), regarding the BeOS capabilities and its marvelous filesystem: BFS.

Metadata are (already) used extensively in all the system. It's a fundamental part of what motivated the rewrite of BeOS (aka Haiku).

BFS is a great substitute for: searchable MP3's tags, Windows'registry stuff or things like that...
You can query an audio file by author, title or album, or find the appropriate application to open a specific file type.
Even filenames extensions are obsolete, since a file have a mimetype attribute.

BeOS has not had the commercial success he deserves!

Welcome in Haiku !