The RDBMS stuff about BFS seemed pretty overstated to me; it amounted to something more like arbitrary file metadata plus indexing that metadata. Frankly, the integration with Tracker for media and mail was pretty compelling: Tracker did half the work of XMMS and half the work of the mail application, so the media player just had to play files and do scrubbing and the mail app just had to let you view/edit individual messages. The search/list stuff many apps have was provided by the filesystem+Tracker.
Keep in mind, this was during the era of Microsoft FindFast. FindFast worked by continuously crawling the filesystem, so the extra cost you might be incurring on BFS on-demand was happening in batch mode on Windows at great cost. slocate still works essentially the same way and is widely used on Linux but doesn't really do metadata queries; Beagle and Spotlight do the same thing as FindFast but plug into filesystem notifications to make the reindexing less painful. I don't think it's necessarily an insane idea to make this part of the OS at a lower level, especially in an era when filesystem notifications were kind of a new idea.
As someone who lived through that era, BeOS was always a long-shot. But it was crazy responsive and looked good. I don't think BeOS failed because of technical shortcomings really. BFS was compelling compared to HFS+, FAT32 and ext2 (and it could mount at least FAT and ext2 natively); ext3 and ReiserFS came out around the same time as Be Inc dissolved so journalling was still a significant filesystem differentiator at the time. Whether BFS was relevant to it or not, BeOS had a reputation for being very good at media operations.
Keep in mind, this was during the era of Microsoft FindFast. FindFast worked by continuously crawling the filesystem, so the extra cost you might be incurring on BFS on-demand was happening in batch mode on Windows at great cost. slocate still works essentially the same way and is widely used on Linux but doesn't really do metadata queries; Beagle and Spotlight do the same thing as FindFast but plug into filesystem notifications to make the reindexing less painful. I don't think it's necessarily an insane idea to make this part of the OS at a lower level, especially in an era when filesystem notifications were kind of a new idea.
As someone who lived through that era, BeOS was always a long-shot. But it was crazy responsive and looked good. I don't think BeOS failed because of technical shortcomings really. BFS was compelling compared to HFS+, FAT32 and ext2 (and it could mount at least FAT and ext2 natively); ext3 and ReiserFS came out around the same time as Be Inc dissolved so journalling was still a significant filesystem differentiator at the time. Whether BFS was relevant to it or not, BeOS had a reputation for being very good at media operations.