Hewlett-Packard Co has announced its Optical Development Software, a collection of software routines common to many optical data storage applications: the company claims that the HP Optical Development Software means that application developers need not reproduce basic functions for optical device support the HP Optical Development Software provides information about tracing removable optical disks, and explains how to interchange files among different environments; optical disk libraries enable optical disks to be moved from place to place within the library, or removed from the optical disk library altogether, but to control and access the information, the operating system and applications need to trace the optical disk locations; the file-interchange information included in the Optical Development Software is called HP Optical Systems Architecture, and it is Hewlett-Packard’s implementation of a proposed ANSI standard that specifies a file-system standard that allows data interchange; the Optical Development Software consists of a C language program that controls the rewritable optical disk library, a media manager which enables a computer using an optical disk library to manage the labelling, tracking, moving and naming of optical disks, and there are software routines to perform back-up over a computer network.
