Patent ID: 8219524

Claim:
A method of storing application-specific data objects included within a file in a data storage system, the method comprising: receiving a request to store data contained in a file generated by an application, wherein the data includes multiple discrete application-specific data objects having differing sizes; determining the application that generated the file that includes the multiple discrete application-specific data objects; based on the determination of the application, identifying at least some of the multiple discrete application-specific data objects within the data, wherein the identifying includes parsing the file using an already existing module particular to the application that generated the file, and wherein the module does not expose the format of the file; and for at least a first one of the identified multiple discrete application-specific data objects: generating a substantially unique identifier that represents the first discrete application-specific data object; based on the generated substantially unique identifier, determining whether an instance of the first discrete application-specific data object is already stored in a data storage system; and if an instance of the first discrete application-specific data object is not already stored in the data storage system, then storing the first discrete application-specific data object in the data storage system.