more idle thoughts - about file metadata

Posted by jimspoon
Nov 17, 2012 at 05:47 AM

Hmm so ADS is not the future?

“Alternate data streams are strictly a feature of the NTFS file system and may not be supported in future file systems. However, NTFS will be supported in future versions of Windows NT.

Future file systems will support a model based on OLE 2.0 structured storage (IStream and IStorage). By using OLE 2.0, an application can support multiple streams on any file system and all supported operating systems (Windows, Macintosh, Windows NT, and Win32s), not just Windows NT.”

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/105763

ok, so what is OLE 2.0 Structured Storage, IStream, and IStorage?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COM_Structured_Storage
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa380369(v=vs.85).aspx

It seems like “file metadata” might be handled under the rubric of “properties and property sets”, including “user-defined property sets”

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa380062(v=vs.85).aspx

“Persistent properties are stored as sets, and one or more sets may be associated with a file system entity. These persistent property sets are intended to be used to store data that is suited to being represented as a collection of fine-grained values. They are not intended to be used as a large data base. They can be used to store summary information about an object on the system, which can then be accessed by any other object that understands how to interpret that property set.”

“The UserDefined property set can be used to hold any properties. Typically, it is used to store named properties created by a user.”