Experience with an interactive attribute-based user information environment

This paper explores an attribute-based approach to storing information in the context of a file system that supports extended attributes about files and a mechanism to manipulate files based on logical queries and comparisons of attributes. The novel aspects of our system are that it is sophisticated enough to operate as a user´s primary method of interaction with the operating system and that it supports derived attributes whose values are derived at look-up time. Organizational mechanisms are explored to aid in the navigation of the system. We implemented our system as a user-level NFS server that supports attribute-based naming of files and other objects. We discuss its details, our experiences with it and performance comparisons between it and a traditional hierarchical file system. Overall the work is successful by demonstrating the feasibility of an attribute-based environment that can be a user´s interface to the underlying system