The state of an individual Muq server is stored in a single .muq
which is logically separated into a number of "databases", typically
one per user plus one for each major system library or
dataset. (These may be thought of as being roughly parallel
to the separate disk partitions of a unix file system, with
their ability to be independently mounted and unmounted.)
These logical databases may be "exported" as independent host files,
which are given the extension .db to distinguish them from
the master .muq server state file.
The resulting .db files may then in turn be "imported" back
into the master Muq .muq file at a later date, or may be
transported to other systems and imported into servers there.
This means that .db files may serve as a universal
interchange format within the Muq world: Any combination of
code and data, no matter how large or complex, may be this
means be passed from one system to another and there
accessed without the usual inconveniences of going through
an obscuring layer of API access functions: The installed
code and data is directly accessable without further ado.
This is a distinct improvement on the typical contemporary arrangement of hundreds of different datafile formats, each of which addresses only a narrow range of datastructures (and typically no code at all), and each of which requires use of a different, clumsy API in order to gain access to the file contents: With luck, this reduced cost of code and data interchange within the Muq world will lead directly to a higher level of cooperative interchange.
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