XAM, or the eXtensible Access Method, is a
standard Standard may refer to:
Symbols
* Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs
* Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification
Norms, conventions or requirements
* Standard (metrology), an object ...
for
computer data storage
Computer data storage or digital data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and Data storage, recording media that are used to retain digital data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers.
The cent ...
developed by
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
and
EMC and maintained by the
Storage Networking Industry Association
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is an American trade association, incorporated in December 1997. It is a registered 501(c)(6) non-profit organization. SNIA has more than 185 unique members, 2,000 active contributing members, an ...
(SNIA). It was ratified as an
ANSI
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private nonprofit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organiz ...
standard by early 2011.
XAM is an API for fixed content aware storage devices. XAM replaces the various proprietary interfaces that have been used for this purpose in the past. Content generating applications now have a standard means of saving and finding their content across a broad array of storage devices.
XAM is similar in function to a
file-system API such as the
POSIX
The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX; ) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines application programming interfaces (APIs), along with comm ...
file and directory operations, in that it allows applications to store and retrieve their data. XAM stores application data in XSet objects that also contain
metadata
Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
* Descriptive ...
.
See also
*
Content-addressable storage The content-addressable network (CAN) is a distributed, decentralized Peer-to-peer, P2P infrastructure that provides hash table functionality on an Internet-like scale. CAN was one of the original four distributed hash table proposals, introduced c ...
References
{{Reflist
External links
XAM Initiative– Provides good material both at the overview and detail level
XAM SDK download– An open source reference implementation of the API
XAM Developers Group– Provides information to assist developers working with XAM
Computer standards
Computer storage technologies