US Patent 10460120 Policy mediated hierarchical structures in key value stores

A key-value store is adapted to represent hierarchical structures, such as directory structures, to be associated with objects otherwise mapped to a flat keyspace. For example, one or more key-value pairs stored in the key-value store are designated to have a key indicating the name of a hierarchical structure, and an associated value that maps the structure to a namespace (e.g., of a group of objects to be associated with a directory). Inbound requests for operations related to the objects in a given namespace and defining the structure are checked against such “redirecting” key-value pairs, as well as one or more policies associated with the structure, the namespace, the key-value pairs, or some combination thereof, to determine whether the structure is related to the namespace objects and whether one or more requested actions are authorized against that structure.