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  PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Concept//EN" "concept.dtd">
<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>