Final Year Project Proposal

Batch 2003

(WebFS) Web File System

Project Supervisor

Team Members
Talha Ekram
s2185
Syed Asim Imtiaz s2193
Imad Qamar
s2190
Amyn Ghazali
s2197

A senior project proposal submitted in partial

fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Bachelor of Science on 5-Oct-06
The Department of Computer Science
National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences
Karachi Campus.
2005-2006

Table of Contents
1.Abstract........................................................................................................................... 3
2.Background and Justification.......................................................................................... 3
3.Research Methodology................................................................................................... 5
4.Project Scope.................................................................................................................. 5
5.High level Project Plan.................................................................................................... 6
6.References...................................................................................................................... 6

1. Abstract
As the computer scientists agree, this is the era that can be termed as Data &
information age. Data storage, retrieval and its ease of scalability are the issues in
hand these days.
A Distributed File system (DFS) is a file system that supports sharing of files across
different machines over some distributed network or even intranet. The key goal of
DFS is to ensure transparency and provide a set of primitives for file operations.
Many Distributed file systems have been developed to cater the growing needs of
data storage. These distributed systems usually work on a specific file system (for
example Network File System). Although these systems provide a set of primitive for
file operations integrated with the OS, but none of them are capable enough to be an
Internet accessible file-system.
Our proposal is to create such a file system which is distributed, de-centralized,
scalable and most importantly accessible by Web Services API (or a protocol).

2. Background and Justification

The advent and boost of networking and network environment caused a surge in
demand for Network / Distributed file systems. Conventional File Systems had a lot
of issues in terms of security, scalability and reliability when working for and over
the network.
Now, even as the desktop applications are now porting to web-based applications;
conventional File Systems as well as network file systems are causing a lot of issues
when a web application is distributed and is expected to scale further. With such a
tremendous growth of data-rich applications on the Internet, there is a serious demand
of an exclusive File System for the internet.
An Internet file system will comprise of a distributed file system, but not limiting it to
the Physical networks. It can be distributed over the internet as geographically
dispersed. Additionally, the most important feature of such a file system is to provide
a Web Services API (or Protocol) for file manipulation and operations. Currently,
there is no such File System that provides a Web Services enabled file system.
For example, Google has developed its own Google File System to cater its growing
need of data management but they are targeted exclusively for Googles work load
and its applications. Simply put, our aim is to develop a generalized File System
accessible by means of Web APIs (or protocol).

Web File System Architecture

WebFS client
application

WebFS Web
application

Web services

De-centralized approach
for locating File(s)

Distributed
File servers

WebFS
Protocol

3. Research Methodology
The development cycle consists of following steps:
1. Development of detailed objectives and specifications of the
system.
2. Study

other

Distributed

File

Systems

which

can

help

us

understand the clear picture of what a Web File System should do.
3. Detailed study of issues & its possible implementation like:
a. File access patterns and issues over a distributed file system
b. Unified naming over distributed network
c. De-centralization of the File System
d. Distributed authentication issues
4. Establishing a small test-network of file servers
5. Implementation of primitives for file operations
6. Transformation and porting the file operation primitives to Web
Services API (or a protocol)
7. Efficiency issues to improve overall system performance and to
study what can be done to induce fault tolerance

4. Project Scope
The project scope covers:
1. Implementation of various algorithms, approaches and
protocols that might become a sub-part of the over-all system:
a. Unified and unique names over distributed network
b. De-centralized approach of resolving names
c. Peer-to-Peer / Client-Server architecture to access file on
a server
2. Implementation of the system
a. Merge and vitalize above separate implementations into a
single usable system
b. Instantiation of a small test-network
3. Implementation of Web Services API (or a protocol) to be used
over the Internet
4. A small demonstration of the Web Services API

Our project scope does not cover:

1. A full-featured web application based on the above API.
2. Inadvertent and inhibited security issues and implications of the
system.
3. Huge handling of data e.g. file-size in GBs.

5. High level Project Plan

Activity List

Gantt chart

Resource Sheet

6. References
a. Patent: Server-less distributed file system
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7062490.html
b. Patent: Distributed File Systems providing a unified namespace with efficient name resolution
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5701462.html
c. Web File System-File-like Access to the Web
research.microsoft.com/~adya/pubs/wfs.html
d. Google File System
labs.google.com/papers/gfs-sosp2003.pdf