We therefore argue that file systems should take over the role
of characterizing workloads and data formats, automatically optimizing
their internal data structures accordingly. Relieving application
developers of the need for detailed knowledge about the
performance characteristics of storage systems is a similar to what
database designers successfully performed in the 1970s with the
introduction of the relational data model and its declarative interfaces.
A declarative interface allows application programmers to
specify what to do based on a logical data model as opposed to
how to do it based on assumptions about the physical layout.