Hello,
RosFS
RosFS is a small service running on system initialization by default that indexes files, folders, users, devices, and network resources can hold metadata via MySQL, sleepycat DB, TCL, Apache, and Perl; which will all be embedded within the service itself. RosFS will hold encrypted
Sounds like quite much work, what you are proposing.
A few problems I know that will arise in developing such a project are:
- Size
- Security
- Where to keep the files on the system
May be somewhere in %SystemRoot%\IndexData\ if you want to use a DB like MySQL? However MS uses another approach. It stores this info in the hidden "X:\System Volume Information" folders separated by drive. It seems, they also use the NTFS 5-feature of change logs to update the indexes. What about trying to do it the same way? This would have the advantage of avoiding synchronisation problems. For example: Imagine one removes a drive from the system, and puts it in another computer. If the metadata is located directly on the drive, you don't have to update all index information. Or imagine, you have got two installations of ROS on one system. This way both can share the same indexes.
- The RosFS query language will be trouble to write and maintain
depending on if a user uses such Databases like ORACLE, MySQL, MSSQL, etc.
Well, this language remembers me of the OQL language used in projects like Castor or Hibernate. Just another layer on top of SQL to become independent from the actual database used. Did you know, WMI also uses a SQL dialect to query services, drive inforation, and whatever else...? May be better to write a WMI implementation for ROS instead of re-inventing the wheel.
- Explorer Integration - Will Explorer.exe need to be rewritten to
allow the addition of Metadata structures, etc.
Not rewritten - maybe extended to be able to query the additional information.
- Web integration - Perl, PHP, TCL, CGI, ISAPI???
Please send me comments and concerns about the RosFS project.
Regards,
Martin