.net: virtual network shares that pull their content from databases or other sources

Question

I'd like to expose data that can come from different sources (ie. a database, or various other folders locations) and make it available as a virtual network folder so that users could access the data, and also write data into this virtual folder structure, with a listener translating the action into what should be done with the file behind the scenes. I'd like to implement versioning of documents this way, where the overwritten files are still available behind the scenes, but a user only sees the latest document.

This functionality is part of what ie. Alfresco does, a document management sytem.

I'm using .NET but these network folders should be accessible from other systems, such as Mac OSX and Linux.

Does anyone have some starting points for me?

Answer 1

I looked at doing something similar a while back. The investigation lead me to this library (http://www.suchwerk.net/sodcms_FUSE_for_WINDOWS.htm) it is a .NET implementation of the FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace).

It is fairly quick and easy to create virtual file systems in .net code. I am not sure that this implementation is accessible off machine, but it is a good place to start when you are dealing with virtual file systems using a managed language.

Hope that puts you on a good path!