Microsoft has released a "customer preview program beta"
of Windows Server 2003 R2, the forthcoming update to Windows Server
2003 with Service Pack 1.
R2 is due to be released by the end of 2005. Microsoft said it
will offer improved branch office server systems and better
identity and access management. Storage management and application
development support has also been improved.
Microsoft has also released Beta 1 of WinFS, the Windows
relational file system. Beta 1, which provides support to Windows
XP, is available to all Microsoft Developer Network
subscribers.
The company said WinFS offers features such as the unified Item
Data Model, which releases individual data items from their
respective applications (such as contacts, calendar events and RSS
feeds) so they can be organised, managed, shared and synchronised
directly alongside files via publicly available schemas.
New organisational constructs in WinFS will help users extend
their data with additional properties and allow applications to
automatically organise their data, said Microsoft.
In addition, WinFS users will be able to build powerful queries
that exploit relationships, such as "show me all mail from people I
am meeting with this week", Microsoft said.