When Microsoft announced a year ago that it had decided to rip the next-generation Windows File System (WinFS) from Longhorn, many company watchers wrote off the feature as little more than vaporware.

But it seems Microsoft didn't simply shelve WinFS. According to sources close to the company, Microsoft just last week put the finishing touches on the first beta release of WinFS. And the company is moving ahead with plans to back-port the WinFS technology to Windows XP, the same way that it decided to do with the Windows Communication Foundation (Indigo) and Windows Presentation Foundation (Avalon) Windows subsystems.