Abstract: Any client application uses a namespace application to resolve its pathname in order to reference a computer file. Computer files are stored in a fixed-content storage cluster and are accessed by retrieving a unique identifier for the computer file using the namespace application. Any type of pathname scheme from any client application is supported by the namespace. The namespace application uses a bindings table to record bindings between objects including the start date and end date for each binding, and direction and separator data used in the pathname scheme. An attribute table in the namespace keeps track of each attribute and its value for each object of the namespace including a start date and an end date for each attribute. The namespace provides syntactic generality in that any pathname scheme of a client application can be resolved to identify a unique computer file in the storage cluster.

Abstract: Any client application uses a namespace application to resolve its pathname in order to reference a computer file. Computer files are stored in a fixed-content storage cluster and are accessed by retrieving a unique identifier for the computer file using the namespace application. Any type of pathname scheme from any client application is supported by the namespace. The namespace application uses a bindings table to record bindings between objects including the start date and end date for each binding, and direction and separator data used in the pathname scheme. An attribute table in the namespace keeps track of each attribute and its value for each object of the namespace including a start date and an end date for each attribute. The namespace provides syntactic generality in that any pathname scheme of a client application can be resolved to identify a unique computer file in the storage cluster.