MEDIA STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM

A system for the management of relational information between media sources, which includes a plurality of procedures to set and query the information. Relations are established either via interaction with the sources or by user's specifications. Further the invention provides for the separation of information concerning source relations, actual media stored for these sources, and binding of media to specific needs for the media within the system. Moreover the invention involves a method of determining media data associated with requests based on source identifiers and range specification on the source including: reading media data from disk and building a database of the location of said media, allowing for the creation of other media, using the system of relational information to build a table of source relations, accepting requests for media data, locating the media based on known existing media and queries for other sources related to the range requested, returning an identifier known to the system to the requester, and accepting requests for information about and access to the actual media data specified by the identifier.