Abstract: A system of and method for maintaining data objects in containers across a network of distributed heterogeneous resources in a manner which is transparent to a client. A client request pertaining to containers is resolved by querying meta data for the container, processing the request through one or more copies of the container maintained on the system, updating the meta data for the container to reflect any changes made to the container as a result processing the request, and, if a copy of the container has changed, changing the status of the copy to indicate dirty status or synchronizing the copy to one or more other copies that may be present on the system.

Abstract: A persistent archive of a collection of data objects comprises a self-describing, infrastructure-independent representation of a logical structure for the collection and a self-describing, infrastructure-independent representation of the data objects. The archive is persistent in that it may be instantiated at an indefinite point in time in the future regardless of the state of technology at that time. A knowledge-based persistent archive of a collection of data objects comprises the foregoing two elements but also a self-describing, infrastructure-independent representation of knowledge relevant to the collection.