Abstract

Naming is a fundamental issue in distributed systems that is growing in importance as the number of directly accessible systems and resources grows to the point that it is difficult to discover the names of files or objects of interest. Based upon our recent experience building a system that combines the ideas of location and naming we propose a naming architecture called content names that is a departure from a traditional tree structured hierarchy. In a content name system a name can include a description of what a user seeks in addition to where an interesting file or object might be found. Our experience with an implementation of content names in a Semantic File System suggests that they will be widely applicable to future distributed system architectures. In addition to our own experience, we have observed a trend towards content names in new distributed services, such as the Archie system and the Automount daemon. We discuss how a Semantic File System can be used to implement content names and examine its feasibility in the context of a USENET publishing system.

Citations