The system uses reparse point attributes for many things, such as directory junctions and remote storage management. If you write a file system filter, you can tap into this mechanism as well. A major new feature of NTFS is the change journal. NTFS now keeps a database consisting of all file and directory changes. The actual data is not maintained in the database, just a record that data has changed.
Any application can scan the change journal to determine which files have changed and when.
This information can greatly improve the performance of many applications. For example, a backup program can use the change journal to know which files have recently changed and backup only those files. Normally, the backup program would have to traverse the entire disk drive and analyze every file's timestamp to determine whether the file should be backed up. Layered Windows More and more applications are using animation in order to direct a user's attention. This requirement hurts performance significantly.