# Structured Storage

Traditional file systems face challenges when they try to efficiently store multiple kinds of objects in one document. OLE provides a solution: a file system within a file. OLE structured storage defines how to treat a single file entity as a structured collection of two types of objects &emdash; storages and streams &emdash; that act like directories and files. This scheme is called structured storage. The purpose of structured storage is to reduce the performance penalties and overhead associated with storing separate objects in a flat file