The most interesting feature that was ever connected to what eventually became Vista was WinFS, a revolutionary (so it seemed, at least back then) new way of storing and accessing information on a computer.

This feature was cut despite actually reaching a closed alpha/technical preview release. There was a smoke and mirrors blog post from MS about the technology living on in an upcoming SQL server release, but to me it just felt like it was axed, hard.

Does anyone have any idea what happened to it? Is it killed, or just on the backburner? Was it just impossible to implement, too expensive, or did someone think of a better idea?

Are there any projects (From MS or anyone else) that have similar goals?