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<concept id="GUID-D8CC5B36-41DA-5989-8FA8-3F56306146A3" xml:lang="en"><title>Introduction

to Stores</title><shortdesc>A store is a collection of streams and is a fundamental part of

the operating system.</shortdesc><prolog><metadata><keywords/></metadata></prolog><conbody>

<p>Stores are used to implement the persistence of objects. Typically, a store

is a file, although an in-memory store is provided. A store can also be embedded

as a stream within another store; this is a more advanced aspect of stores.</p>

<p>For many purposes, stores replace the direct use of files and the File

Server Client Side API, although other features of the file server are still

relevant. Stores are a key building block for the application architecture

because they provide the support necessary for embedded documents.</p>

<p>The basic behaviour of stores is encapsulated by the <codeph>CStreamStore</codeph> class

and provides the core abstract framework that allows streams to be manipulated.

Each class derived from <codeph>CStreamStore</codeph> implements the parts

of the API that are appropriate.</p>

<p>A number of stores are defined that build on <codeph>CStreamStore</codeph>.

Some of the most important are: <codeph>CPersistentStore</codeph>, <codeph>CFileStore</codeph>, <codeph>CDirectFileStore</codeph>, <codeph>CPermanentFileStore</codeph>, <codeph>CEmbeddedStore</codeph>, <codeph>CBufStore</codeph>. Each has various

capabilities.</p>

<p>A store is also the basis of the relational database provided by DBMS.</p>

</conbody></concept>