Structured Storage
Structured Storage provides file and data persistence in COM by handling a single file as a structured collection of objects known as storages and streams.
The purpose of Structured Storage is to reduce the performance penalties and overhead associated with storing separate objects in a single file. Structured Storage provides a solution by defining how to handle a single file entity as a structured collection of two types of objects—storages and streams—through a standard implementation called Compound Files. This enables the user to interact with, and manage, a compound file as if it were a single file rather than a nested hierarchy of separate objects.
Traditional file systems encounter challenges when they attempt to store efficiently multiple kinds of objects in one document. COM provides a solution: a file system within a file. COM structured storage defines how to treat a single file entity as a structured collection of two types of objects — storages and streams — that perform like directories and files. This scheme is called structured storage. The purpose of structured storage is to reduce the performance penalties and overhead associated with storing separate objects in a flat file.
This section contains an overview of structured storage benefits and fundamentals, property sets and asynchronous structured storage as well as a historical look at file systems:
- Compound file implementation
- NTFS file system implementation
- Stand-alone implementation
