So tonight I'm sitting down pondering the schema of a comic-book collection in WinFS.

Some things are very clear to me. For example, a "publisher" is an organization, and WinFS already provides a Contacts.Organization type. It provides everything I need to record a publisher, so I don't even need to subclass it (although I might, just in case).

A "creator" (a writer, artist etc) is usually a person, but sometimes they're credited as organizations. Perhaps Creator should derive from the more generic System.Contact, or perhaps there's a better way to do that.

A "title" (a collection of issues published under the same name) is a bit trickier. In Comicster right now, a title is a first-class citizen. However, the more I think about it ... is a title just a link between a publisher and an issue? I mean, sure, it provides a few extra details, like the year it began publication, but in the end it's just a link. Title could derive from Storage.Link.

I've done some readings in the SDK help file about how to define WinFS custom types (it's an XML schema). All I have to do now is learn the ins and outs of the esoterica like defining links between types, and collections etc.

This is really exciting. It's a bold step into a new kind of development ... really blurring the line between databases and file storage. I'll keep you posted!