Integrating Content-based Access Mechanisms with Hierarchical File Systems

We present a new file system that combines name-based and content-based access to files at the same time. Our design allows both methods to be used at any time, thus preserving the benefits of both. Users can create their own name spaces based on queries, on explicit path names, or on any combination interleaved arbitrarily. All regular file operations - such as adding, deleting, or moving files - are supported in the same way, and in addition, query consistency is maintained and adapted to what the user is manually doing. One can add, remove, or move results of queries, and in general handle them as if they were regular files. This creates interesting new consistency problems, for which we suggest and implement solutions. Remote file systems or remote query systems (e.g., web search) can be integrated by users into their own coherent name spaces in a clean way. We believe that our design can serve as the basis for the future information-rich file systems, allowing users better handle on their information.