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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Database technology
From:       iglio () fub ! it (Pietro Iglio)
Date:       1999-03-08 14:32:13
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At 19.43 05/03/99 +0100, Torben Weis <weis@troll.no> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>during a talk with Matthias and Arnt we came to the conclusion
>that file systems suck. You can not store additional information in
>it. That in turn means that you can noy say: I want to see all images
>that are related to my last holiday in the bahamas. 

Hi,

I agree with you about the idea of storing additional information for each
file.
I have a student working on this project. He is working on Meta File
Information
(this is how we call this stuff) at filesystem level, comparing all the
possible
solutions and, possibly, providing an implementation for Linux.

A couple of months ago we discussed this topic on the linux kernel development
mailing list, proposing this extension to the ext2 filesystem. The response
was that this could be a good idea, but it could break compatibility with
other UNIX systems and ext2 is not an experimental filesystem.

In my opinion, the meta information should be stored at filesystem level and
accessible from every application (console or GUI) using a simple library.
XML is probably the best choice for data representation.
Many non GUI tools could take advantage of this info (eg. web servers, find,
etc.).

I still don't know if my student is going to implement meta information as an
extension of ext2 (I'll keep you informed). In the meanwhile, you can have a
look at a similar project, named Attributed File System:

http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/libs/atfs.html
http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/devel/atfs-dev.html

-- Pietro Iglio

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