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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+<!-- Copyright (c) 2007-2010 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies) All rights reserved. -->
+<!-- This component and the accompanying materials are made available under the terms of the License 
+"Eclipse Public License v1.0" which accompanies this distribution, 
+and is available at the URL "http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html". -->
+<!-- Initial Contributors:
+    Nokia Corporation - initial contribution.
+Contributors: 
+-->
+<!DOCTYPE concept
+  PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Concept//EN" "concept.dtd">
+<concept id="GUID-5EAED550-5FFC-54A6-BB4A-720975B127B8" xml:lang="en"><title>Stores
+Overview</title><shortdesc>Provides structured data storage, using networks of streams.</shortdesc><prolog><metadata><keywords/></metadata></prolog><conbody>
+<section id="GUID-A750DA94-F7BD-49F2-AB3C-4B75665C211D"><title>Architectural relationships</title> <p>A stream is a representation
+of a data structure (such as an object) as a sequence of bytes. Structures
+as complex as most applications require multiple streams to store their state.
+This is termed a store. Stream types that work with stores are provided by
+the Store Streams API. </p> <p>The Stores API defines both base classes that
+define store abstractions without specifying the storage medium, and some
+concrete store types. The File Stores API defines further concrete stores,
+which use file storage. </p> <p>Concrete store types do not have to provides
+all the stream manipulation functionality defined by the base class interfaces:
+for example, direct file stores do not support individual deletion of streams
+within a store. </p> <p>Stores are integrated with the application architecture
+as defined in the Uikon Core API. That expects file-based and embeddable applications
+to handle their data storage through stores. </p> </section>
+<section id="GUID-5806D6A8-2256-4741-8691-AB75DF877598"><title>Description</title> <p>The API has five key concepts: stream
+store base, persistent store base, embedded store, memory store, and dictionary
+store base and streams.</p> <p><b>Stream store base</b> </p> <p>This defines
+an interface for streams to be added and deleted to a store, a commit/revert
+mechanism, and space compaction and reclamation. Stores return a stream ID
+when a stream is created. A particular stream can be opened by specifying
+its ID. </p> <p>Some objects can save and restore their state to and from
+a store. It is conventional to implement functions named <codeph>StoreL()</codeph> and <codeph>RestoreL()</codeph> for
+these purposes. The most important case of this is the application document
+class (<codeph>CEikDocument</codeph>), which can be implemented to store and
+restore an application document. </p> <p>The stream store base class is <xref href="GUID-30726D8E-E18D-3A3A-8EFB-CCA4F04C984D.dita"><apiname>CStreamStore</apiname></xref>.</p> <p><b>Persistent
+store base</b> </p> <p>Most store types require that the store persists beyond
+the lifetime of the application that created it. The persistent store base
+extends the stream store base to provide this. In particular it provides:</p> <p>a
+root stream, from which all other streams within the store can be found</p> <p>open
+and close store functions</p> <p>The persistent store base class is <xref href="GUID-21637329-EC49-39AD-8986-A22289D8CFE8.dita"><apiname>CPersistentStore</apiname></xref>.</p> <p><b>Embedded
+store</b> </p> <p>An embedded store can itself be stored as a stream in another
+store. They are used to embed application documents in other application documents.
+Once written, streams in the store cannot be modified: the store must be deleted
+and rewritten in its entirety. </p> <p>The embedded store is a concrete type,
+derived from <xref href="GUID-21637329-EC49-39AD-8986-A22289D8CFE8.dita"><apiname>CPersistentStore</apiname></xref>, and is provided by <xref href="GUID-F2EC3A9D-5F4B-3C98-98DC-44394C54B6DE.dita"><apiname>CEmbeddedStore</apiname></xref>.</p> <p><b>Memory
+store</b> </p> <p>A memory store resides in memory and exists only for the
+life of the store object. They can be used for transient complex dynamic structures
+such as undo buffers.</p> <p>The memory store is a concrete type, derived
+from <xref href="GUID-30726D8E-E18D-3A3A-8EFB-CCA4F04C984D.dita"><apiname>CStreamStore</apiname></xref>, and is provided by <xref href="GUID-5EC5199D-50F2-3BFA-BA45-4C5C017281DD.dita"><apiname>CBufStore</apiname></xref>.</p> <p><b>Dictionary
+store base and streams</b> </p> <p>A dictionary store contains a sequence
+of streams, each of which is accessed using a UID, rather than a simple stream
+ID. Dictionary stores are used by the application architecture to handle <filepath>.ini</filepath> files
+for applications. </p> <p>The dictionary store base class is <xref href="GUID-9899DA2C-DB1B-3D67-8719-B7E13658B4D7.dita"><apiname>CDictionaryStore</apiname></xref>.
+Specialised stream types, <xref href="GUID-F3322968-F922-3676-9BDD-611089C10D98.dita"><apiname>RDictionaryReadStream</apiname></xref> and <xref href="GUID-C8A4BDE0-9F00-376E-9BA3-BAC539800D17.dita"><apiname>RDictionaryWriteStream</apiname></xref>,
+are provided for use with dictionary stores.</p> </section>
+<section id="GUID-902CA56A-CAD2-4CB8-8640-FCB121773405"><title>See also</title> <p><xref href="GUID-21CF1D5F-44C5-5407-B3C9-8BC103C97079.dita">File
+Stores Overview</xref> </p> <p><xref href="GUID-66ACFC54-5671-5B72-9DBC-A76F7A112D63.dita">Store
+Streams Overview</xref> </p> <p><xref href="GUID-744ACF2C-963B-5E2F-A6B3-220AB899FD23.dita">Streaming
+Overview</xref> </p> </section>
+</conbody></concept>
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