Abstract: A policy based archiving system receives data files in various formats and with various attributes. The archiving system examines each data file's attributes to correlate each data file with at least one policy by employing policy predicates. A policy is a collection of actions and decisions relating to the various storage and processing modules of the archiving system. In one aspect, the archiving system scans the content of a received data file to correlate the data file to a policy in accordance with the semantic content of the data file.