Experience with an Interactive Attribute-Based User Information Environment

摘要

This paper explores an attribute-based approach to storing information in the context of a file system that supports extended attributes about files and a mechanism to manipulate files based on logical queries and compar- isons of attributes The novel aspects of our system are that it is sophisti- cated enough to operate as a user s primary method of interaction with the operating system and that it supports derived attributes whose values are derived at look-up time Organizational mechanisms are explored to aid in the navigation of the system We implemented our system as a user-level NFS server that supports attribute-based naming of files and other objects We discuss its details our experiences with it and performance comparisons between it and a traditional hierarchical file system