I can only conclude that Addison-Wesley's editors have been taking me seriously because here we have yet another book that meets many of my oft-iterated requirements for good programming books.

Let me start by making it clear that this is not a book about proprietary file structures. This is a book about designing and using file structures. As such it makes an excellent study of this important subject area. If more programmers understood the fundamentals covered by this book we would have far fewer botched jobs of management of persistent objects.

There have been previous books on this subject, indeed two of the three authors were responsible for one of them. What sets this book apart is that it uses C++ as the language for exposition of the technical material. Now that could be pretty scary for the programmer or student whose knowledge of C++ is tenuous. The authors have thought of this and progressively introduce new aspects of C++ along side the development of the main topic. You will need some knowledge of C++ before you start but will know far more by the time you have finished.

If you have rudimentary C++ skills and a desire to understand the design of file structures in some depth this book will help you while developing your C++ skills. Sadly the authors are still using classical C++ and are hand-rolling their own data structures so it is not really suitable if your main objective is to improve your C++.