4 ms·

I never personally used it, but I've heard the BeFS was designed to have significant non-hierarchical use cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_File_System h

I never personally used it, but I've heard the BeFS was designed to have significant non-hierarchical use cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_File_System: > [BeFS] includes support for extended file attributes (metadata), with indexing and querying characteristics to provide functionality similar to that of a relational database. IIRC, this was pretty hyped at the time, but they had to back away from it. I don't know if it was because if the concept was too unfamiliar to people familiar with the hierarchical paradigm or if it didn't work as well in practice as it was imagined. There's also a book about it written by its designer and now freely available: http://www.nobius.org/dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf http://www.nobius.org/dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf

nayuki 9y ago
BeFS extended file attributes are a good example to point out. I watched this excellent talk which shows the power of live queries: https://systemswe.love/archive/minneapolis-2017/ivan-richwalski https://systemswe.love/archive/minneapolis-2017/ivan-richwal... Unfortunately, file attributes is not a feature I want to see. They don't solve the problems with naming files or deduplicating files. Metadata is attached to a file, so when the file is gone the metadata is gone. I instead proposed that metadata can be freestanding, and can exist even if the main file is missing. Relevant section to read: https://www.nayuki.io/page/designing-better-file-organization-around-tags-not-hierarchies#internal-vs-external-metadata https://www.nayuki.io/page/designing-better-file-organizatio... I did read the entire book "Practical File System Design with the Be File System", but didn't find it helpful for what I was working on. I can skip the low-level bits because I'll probably build on top of a NoSQL database or something.

nayuki 9y ago

BeFS extended file attributes are a good example to point out. I watched this excellent talk which shows the power of live queries: https://systemswe.love/archive/minneapolis-2017/ivan-richwalski https://systemswe.love/archive/minneapolis-2017/ivan-richwal... Unfortunately, file attributes is not a feature I want to see. They don't solve the problems with naming files or deduplicating files. Metadata is attached to a file, so when the file is gone the metadata is gone. I instead proposed that metadata can be freestanding, and can exist even if the main file is missing. Relevant section to read: https://www.nayuki.io/page/designing-better-file-organization-around-tags-not-hierarchies#internal-vs-external-metadata https://www.nayuki.io/page/designing-better-file-organizatio... I did read the entire book "Practical File System Design with the Be File System", but didn't find it helpful for what I was working on. I can skip the low-level bits because I'll probably build on top of a NoSQL database or something.