Define record format in file management of an operating system

Skip to content. Change Language. Related Articles. CPU Scheduling. Process Synchronization. Memory Management. Disk Management. Disk Scheduling. Operating System Quizes. Table of Contents. More advanced file management systems can provide additional functions, such as document management software DMS which can organize important documents.

Files are assigned a label or indexed according to their attributes to build a searchable database for faster retrieval. A file management system should not be confused with a file system, which manages all types of data and files in an operating system OS , or a database management system DBMS , which has relational database capabilities and includes a programming language for further data manipulation.

By: Brad Rudisail Contributor. By: Kaushik Pal Contributor. By: Leah Zitter Contributor. Dictionary Dictionary Term of the Day. Decentralized Finance. Techopedia Terms. Connect with us. Sign up. Term of the Day. In the sequential access method, information stored in the file is also processed one by one. Most compilers access files using this access method. The random access method is also called direct random access.

This method allow accessing the record directly. Each record has its own address on which can be directly accessed for reading and writing. This type of accessing method is based on simple sequential access. In this access method, an index is built for every file, with a direct pointer to different memory blocks. In this method, the Index is searched sequentially, and its pointer can access the file directly. Multiple levels of indexing can be used to offer greater efficiency in access.

It also reduces the time needed to access a single record. A single directory may or may not contain multiple files. It can also have sub-directories inside the main directory. File type refers to the ability of the operating system to distinguish different types of file such as text files source files and binary files etc.

Many operating systems support many types of files. File access mechanism refers to the manner in which the records of a file may be accessed. A sequential access is that in which the records are accessed in some sequence, i.

This access method is the most primitive one. Example: Compilers usually access files in this fashion. Each record has its own address on the file with by the help of which it can be directly accessed for reading or writing.