HCP System Management Help


Object based storage

HCP stores objects in a repository. Each object permanently associates data HCP receives (for example, a document, an image, or a movie) with information about that data, called metadata.

An object encapsulates:

Fixed-content data — An exact digital reproduction of data as it existed before it was stored in HCP. Once it’s in the repository, this fixed-content data cannot be modified.

System metadata — System-managed properties that describe the fixed-content data (for example, its size and creation date). System metadata includes policies, such as retention, that influence how transactions and internal processes affect the object.

Custom metadata — Optional metadata that a user or application provides to further describe the object. Custom metadata is specified as one or more annotations, where each annotation is a discrete unit of information about the object.

You can use custom metadata to create self-describing objects. Users and applications can use this metadata to understand and repurpose object content.

HCP can store multiple versions of an object, thus providing a history of how the data has changed over time. Each version is a separate object, with its own system metadata and, optionally, its own custom metadata and ACL. Except for the PUT command, which can replace the current version of an object with a newer one, HSwift API operations can only impact the latest version of an object.

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