Safety Features

ZipStream's  primary design and implementation goal is to deliver an 'on 
the fly' compression system for OS/2 that is safe and reliable. 

To accomplish this, ZipStream has the following safety features as part of 
its design: 

No Container Files 

ZipStream uses in-situ compression.  That is, the file being compressed is 
replaced in the standard file system with a compressed version.  It can 
then be referenced via a ZipStream drive as uncompressed data again, or it 
can be inter-actively uncompressed again with a ZipStream utility. 

The safety benefit of this is three fold: 

 1. As each file is processed individually, any failure of the ZipStream 
    compression system will be limited to the one file, unlike a container 
    system where any failure of the container compression system could 
    result in a catastrophic loss of data. 

 2. As ZipStream uses standard OS/2 File Systems, it benefits from the 
    years of File System technology and reliability that have been 
    designed into OS/2. 

 3. In the event of some type of system failure where the system can no 
    longer boot, files compressed with ZipStream can be interactively 
    decompressed with a small standard ZipStream utility (ZSUnpack).  This 
    means, when you are in a situation where you are unable to get your 
    system running well enough to use the transparent ZipStream 
    compression system, you can decompress your files on your system, or 
    take them to another system where they can be decompressed. 

No Direct Disk Access 

ZipStream never makes direct physical disk access to any of the OS/2 File 
Systems.  All accesses to files are done via the standard OS/2 File System 
application programming interfaces.  The benefit here is that as ZipStream 
only uses standard OS/2 interfaces, any failure on ZipStream's behalf will 
benefit from the in-built protection afforded by OS/2's design. 

In simpler terms, this means that it is practically impossible for 
ZipStream to damage an OS/2 File System. 

Object Orientated Design 

ZipStream uses state of the art Object Orientated techniques, and other 
sophisticated design practices to ensure safe and reliable operation.