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Modern applications place increasingly stringent demands on storage systems. First, storage systems are expected to deal with a wide variety of different data types. While in the early days of computers text files or linear arrays of numbers sufficed, now program images (which have a richer structure than text files), large collections of database records and continuous media need to be stored.

Second, we have a variety of different interface models for this storage, ranging from the simple file model of Unix, through relational and object oriented database structures. We are just starting to learn about the application program interfaces (API's) that are appropriate for continuous media.

As we build more complex systems in the future, addition storage models will arise that we cannot now foresee. It is incumbent on us to develop systems that can deal with all of these different structures as efficiently and easily.

Thus far this has not been the case. Rarely do object oriented systems coexist with conventional file systems.