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    12 <concept xml:lang="en" id="GUID-D8CC5B36-41DA-5989-8FA8-3F56306146A3"><title>Introduction to stores</title><prolog><metadata><keywords/></metadata></prolog><conbody><p>A store is a collection of streams and is a fundamental part of the operating system. </p> <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>