1. A method, comprising: receiving a request for metadata associated with a first file, the request received from an application running on an application server connected to a file server over a network; accessing a metadata database for the metadata associated with the first file, the metadata corresponding to a preoptimized version of the first file; wherein an optimized version of the first file is accessed when the metadata associated with the first file is not available in the metadata database, the optimized version of the first file including compressed data from the first file and metadata corresponding to the preoptimized version of the first file.