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What type of file starts with BOSS 7?

I am viewing files created in the early 90s. One of them seems to contain links to data packed in some binary format in a large number of files.

The first six bytes of the file are: 0x42 0x4f 0x53 0x53 0x20 0x37, which points to BOSS 7.

My searches for various sources of information about the file type, including / usr / share / file / magic, showed nothing. Does anyone know what software could be used to create files starting with these bytes? Any information about the layout of the files would be great.

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It looks like the file could have been created by VisualWorks Smalltalk:

[BOSS 7.5]

Contains a service for streaming binary objects, which supports the efficient storage and search of objects, including code, to and from files.

Note that the package system now cancels BOSS to store code.

I tried to download the file using the IDE provided at http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/ and it created a significant exception:

  The identifier MediaCollectionDictionary has no binding

The file contains:

  MediaCollectionDictionary
     MediaCollection *
     CallMediaVehDict2

etc., which means that if I could now figure out what the rest of the files are doing and learn enough SmallTalk, I could unravel this mess.

Of course, I'm not sure if this analysis is correct. So please, if you have any other ideas, let me know. Thanks.

Much later: So, my initial assessment seems correct. I got some useful comp.lang.smalltalk tips: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.smalltalk/browse_thread/thread/5d55d857e2f80158#

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