Subj : Re: format for data storage?
To   : comp.programming
From : alfps
Date : Thu Jul 28 2005 05:40 am

* js5895:
> I need to store a lot of data(mostly text files) into a single file.
> I programmed a interface that is a hierarchical tree (shown below)
> What format should I store the data so I can access it through the
> interface, maybe ZIP, a Database, or other. I looked at B-trees,
> BTW, my file system is NTFS.

NTFS/Windows has not just one but two ways of doing what you want.

The lowest-level way is additional data streams in a file, but this does not
directly support hierarchical storage; a hierarchy can however be simulated
easily by naming conventions for streams, and in other ways.

The not-so-low-level way is OLE Structured Storage (a.k.a. Active Structured
Storage), which does directly support hierarchies of "files within files",
and is built on top of whatever facilities the relevant file system offers,
which for NTFS means it uses additional data streams in the file.

-- 
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