This report has presented many issues and problems which arise when the IEEE 1003.1-1990 Standard is applied to environments other than the one for which it was developed, i.e., the single system accessing a local file system. The issues and problems discussed are those whose resolution formed the basis of the IEEE 1003.8 Transparent File Access (TFA) Standard which is under development. This specification provides:
With examples and demonstrations using NFS, the most widely used and implemented remote file system, this report has illustrated some of the features and capabilities of Unix file systems, in particular, the file system specified in IEEE 1003.1-1990. Many of these features, e.g., the last-close semantic and non-interleaved writes, are not required for most applications. Most applications, e.g., word processors, consist of a single process simply reading and writing files without shared access with any other process. On the other hand, a database application usually consists of several processes on several systems simultaneously accessing the same database files. For such an application, the file system which it accesses must be robust enough to support the shared simultaneous access by many processes to many files.
The IEEE 1003.8 TFA Standard under development is a specification which is suitable for use by all applications. For the simple application, such as a word processor, the IEEE 1003.8 TFA Standard provides an access specification for rudimentary file systems, while, at the same time, provides an access specification for a robust file system capable of supporting complex applications, such as a database management system.