No Long Days

It is surprising to me after ten years of client and server operating system from Microsoft that they still don't know what client-server is all about. I am still amazed every time I copy or delete stuff using Explorer from my PC that is on a server that all the files have to move over the network to my PC then back to the server.

This isn't so bad when I am on the LAN but on the WAN it makes working with folders on the server very slow. The only option is to remote desktop in and work there and I really don't like people remoting into the server console.

Here is how I envision how client-server Explorer would work.

1. If I delete a folder on a remote machine the delete should happen as a local process on the remote machine. No network access should be needed other than sending the delete command to the remote machine. BTW: This should work whether the remote machine is a server OS or a client OS of Windows.

2. If I copy or move a file and the source and destination are on the same machine, once again, this should be recognized and all the work done as a process on the remote machine so no major network access is needed.

3. If I copy or move a file from one machine to another a peer-to-perr connection should be made to move those files over the network. This would allow for working from a WAN location and moving stuff from one server to another that are each on the same LAN without needing to move all the data over the WAN to the PC to the other server.

Perhaps this was part of the plan for WinFS. Personally, I don't think this would be a difficult feature to implement. Unix has had this for years. Granted you could say the SSH is similar to a remote desktop. But, it is a lot more light weight.

I also know that I could use PSExec to do some of this stuff. And, I do use that in build scripts and such. But, when just working interactively I get very frustrated when waiting for a folder on a server to delete or copy files when if I did it locally on the console it would take a fraction of the time.

If anyone knows of a product that makes the Windows files system work this way, please comment and let me know about it.