The Road to Cairo

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April 08, 2002 (Computerworld) --

The year is 1992. Jim Allchin reveals Microsoft's plans to deliver a version of Windows NT, code-named Cairo, in 1994. Cairo is slated to use an Object File Store (OFS) as its file system. OFS is an object-oriented database designed to make it easy to search documents and other structured data by content. Fast forward to 2002. The continued status of OFS can best be described by the famous Monty Python cheese shop sketch (see www.montypython.net/scripts/cheese.php for the complete script). In the sketch, the customer (John Cleese) asks the clerk (Michael Palin) for every conceivable type of cheese, but the shop is out of stock on every item. This leads to the now classic exchange, which exploits Cleese's exceptional timing and delivery:
Cleese: "It's not much of a cheese shop, is it?"
Palin: "Finest in the district, sir!"
Cleese: "Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, please."
Palin: "Well, it's so clean, sir!"
Cleese: "It's certainly uncontaminated by cheese."
Similarly, 10 years after Allchin's initial promise, Windows remains uncontaminated by many of the features originally slated for Windows NT and Cairo, including OFS.
There is a very simple explanation for the delay in the case of OFS. Microsoft thought it might need OFS to win the battle against OS/2, which already had an object-oriented foundation and threatened to include a database-oriented file system. As it turned out, Microsoft was able to beat OS/2 by withholding Windows 95 licenses for IBM PCs, as was documented in Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's findings of fact. With OS/2 out of the way, Microsoft could put OFS on the back burner in order to address other pressing threats to its desktop monopoly.
Now OFS is back. Allchin stated last month that OFS is scheduled to go into the next major release of Windows, code-named Longhorn.

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