SHARED NAMESPACE FOR STORAGE CLUSTERS

摘要

Client applications use a namespace application to resolve its pathname to reference a file. Files are stored in a fixed-content cluster, accessed by retrieving a unique identifier. Any pathname scheme is supported by the namespace. Namespace application uses a bindings table to record bindings between objects including start and end dates for each binding, and direction and separator data used in the pathname scheme. Namespace attribute table keeps track of attributes/values for each object including start and end dates for each attribute. Namespace provides syntactic generality - any pathname scheme can be resolved to identify a unique file. Namespace may be shared between applications; when one application modifies a file/attributes, another application using a different pathname scheme has access to the same data/modifications. Namespace provides near instantaneous continuous backup for files in the cluster because of start and end dates for bindings and attributes.