Einbettung neuer Verwaltungsmethoden in die hierarchische Dateisystemsicht The hierarchical organization of files has dominated computer systems for many years and this will probably not change in the near future. However with the rapid annual growth of new data this classical hierarchical file system management method reaches its limitations even when the user consistently sets up and continually expands an elaborated directory structure with well disciplined naming. This paper introduces new management methods to maintain an overview of all files which can be embedded in the hierarchical file system. A metadata based file system which is based on the hierarchical file system offers in addition to hierarchical access a more flexible and associative access to files via virtual objects by providing query capabilities of index and metadata which are stored in a database. The query results are presented in a clearly arranged form of virtual directories and virtual files so that the intuitive hierarchical view continues to be maintained ...