Systems and methods for compressing files for storage and operation on compressed files

A computer system configured for operating with compressed files, the system comprising:

• a file system coupled to a storage medium and to at least one application program interface (API) for communicating with the file system by means of file access-related requests;
• an intercepting subsystem for intercepting at least one of said file access-related requests generated via the API;
• and
• a compression subsystem for providing at least one of the following with respect to said intercepted request:
• i) deriving and compressing data corresponding to the intercepted file access request and communicating with the file system for storing the compressed data at the storage medium as at least one compressed file, and
• ii) restoring at least part of compressed data corresponding to the intercepted file access-related request and communicating the resulting data through the API, the compression subsystem further:
• a) determining a serial number of first compressed section comprising data to be updated constituting the original compressed section,
• b) determining the storage location of the compressed data to be updated by referring to a section table which holds information on CLUs corresponding to said compressed section and storage location thereof,
• c) restoring the cluster from said original compressed section,
• d) calculating the offset of updating data within said cluster and updating of the given data range,
• e) compressing the updated cluster into an updated compressed section,
• f) overwriting of said original compressed section with updated compressed section, and
• g) updating the section table.

For use in a computer system comprising a file system coupled with a storage medium and at least one application program interface (API) configured to communicate with the file system by means of file access-related requests, a computer program product comprising a computer useable medium including computer readable program code embodied therein for storing a compressed file, the computer program product comprising computer code that, when executed by a processor, causes the processor to:

• a) intercept at least one of said file access-related requests generated via the API;
• and
• b) provide at least one of the following with respect to said intercepted request:
• i) derive and compress data corresponding to the intercepted file access-related request and communicate with the file system for storing the compressed data at the storage medium as at least one compressed file, and
• ii) restore at least part of compressed data corresponding to the intercepted file access-related request and communicate the resulting data through the API, wherein:
• the file access-related requests is selected from the group comprising a “create file” request, a “read file” request, and a “write file” request, and
• said compressed data are packed into one or more compressed sections corresponding to fixed-size portions of data (clusters) from the raw file, said compressed sections divided into fixed-size compression logical units (CLU);
• c) determine a serial number of first compressed section comprising data to be updated constituting the original compressed section;
• d) determine the storage location of the compressed data to be updated by referring to a section table which holds information on CLUs corresponding to said compressed section and storage location thereof;
• e) restore the cluster from said original compressed section;
• f) calculate the offset of updating data within said cluster and update of the given data range;
• g) compress the updated cluster into an updated compressed section;
• h) overwrite of said original compressed section with updated compressed section;
• and
• i) update the section table.