The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has developed XAM (eXtensible Access Method), an Interface specification which defines a standard access method (API) between “Consumers” (application and management software) and “Providers” (storage systems) to manage fixed content reference information storage services. XAM includes metadata definitions to accompany data to achieve application interoperability, storage transparency, and automation for ILM-based practices, long term records retention, and information security. XAM will be expanded over time to include other data types as well as support additional implementations based on the XAM API to XAM conformant storage systems.
Records Managers should like this: XAM provides a standardized set of management disciplines and semantics for fixed content, such as retention, expiration, etc.
for further information and to download the architecture paper go to:
http://www.snia.org/tech_activities/standards/curr_standards/xam/
Benefits
Application developers, storage vendors, and storage management professionals all benefit from XAM:
- Application developers benefit because the standard XAM interface no longer requires vendor specific code for reference information storage. This feature enables application developers to spend less time writing and maintaining vendor-specific code so that they can devote more time to features that add value to their applications. These developers can rely on a standard interface— an interface that is designed and supported by the vendors that are involved in the reference information industry.
- Storage vendors benefit because XAM provides a consistent set of data access and data management capabilities across XAM-compliant storage systems. Therefore, these vendors can plug their hardware into a standard interface that enables application vendors using XAM to transparently use their storage platform. XAM also enables standards-based techniques to move data between diverse storage platforms and information management applications to design solutions based on a common set of features and functions.
- Storage management professionals benefit because they can easily relocate data to accommodate storage system replacement. In addition, they can select best-of-breed applicationprograms and storage systems without being constrained by integration issues.
jhagmann - 11. Jun, 09:44
