A Manager for Named, Permanent Objects

Abstract

Storing data in a computing system for a long time has been of interest ever since it was possible to do so. Classically, on stores bit- or byte- strings, or perhaps arrays of "records." Yet, current programming philosophy stresses data abstraction techniques and concepts. This report describes an object-oriented filing system which stores abstract objects, and allows the user to view the system as though one were storing abstract objects, rather than storing some external representation of the abstractions. Names may be attached to the (permanent) objects, and objects may be contained in (and may contain) other objects. Furthermore, an object may be contained in more than one object, thereby allowing the naming structure to be a network.