file organization

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file organization The structure of a file (especially a data file), defined in terms of its components and how they are mapped onto backing store. Any given file organization supports one or more file access methods. Organization is thus closely related to but conceptually distinct from access methods. The distinction is similar to that between data structures and the procedures and functions that operate on them (indeed a file organization is a large-scale data structure), or to that between a logical schema of a database and the facilities in a data manipulation language (see database language). There is no very useful or commonly accepted taxonomy of methods of file organization: most attempts confuse organization with access methods (which are easier to classify).