A method of operating a computing device to explore content of a data storage, such as a binary file, using a format definition. The format definition comprises a class, with data members of the class representing a layout of data elements and their relationships in a type of a data storage. The relationships among the data elements may be represented using inheritance. The class derives from a base class providing reflection functionality. The reflection allows parsing the class so that its data members and their values are accessed at runtime, using the base class. Results of the parsing are presented in a form that allows exploring the content of the data storage and modifying the parsing results. New data may be created that conforms to the modified results.