db_btree

btree information for dbopen() 

Miscellaneous Information


SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/types.h>

#include <db.h>

typedef struct {
	u_long flags;
	u_int cachesize;
	int maxkeypage;
	int minkeypage;
	u_int psize;
	int (*compare)(const DBT *key1, const DBT *key2);
	size_t (*prefix)(const DBT *key1, const DBT *key2);
	int lorder;
} BTREEINFO;


DESCRIPTION

The dbopen() function is the library interface to database files. One of the supported file formats is btree files. The general description of the database access methods is in dbopen(). This reference page describes only the btree specific information.

The btree data structure is a sorted, balanced tree structure storing associated key/data pairs.

The btree access-method-specific data structure provided to dbopen() is defined in the <db.h> include file as shown in the SYNOPSIS section. The elements of this structure are as follows:

flags  

The flags value is specified by or'ing any of the following values:

R_DUP  

Permit duplicate keys in the tree, that is, permit insertion if the key to be inserted already exists in the tree. The default behavior, as described in dbopen(), is to overwrite a matching key when inserting a new key or to fail if the R_NOOVERWRITE flag is specified. The R_DUP flag is overridden by the R_NOOVERWRITE flag, and if the R_NOOVERWRITE flag is specified, attempts to insert duplicate keys into the tree fail.

If the database contains duplicate keys, the order of retrieval of key/data pairs is undefined if the get routine is used, however, seq routine calls with the R_CURSOR flag set always return the logical first of any group of duplicate keys.

cachesize  

A suggested maximum size (in bytes) of the memory cache. This value is only advisory, and the access method allocates more memory rather than fail. Since every search examines the root page of the tree, caching the most recently used pages substantially improves access time. In addition, physical writes are delayed as long as possible, so a moderate cache can reduce the number of I/O operations significantly. Obviously, using a cache increases (but only increases) the likelihood of corruption or lost data if the system crashes while a tree is being modified. If cachesize is 0 (no size is specified), a default cache is used.

maxkeypage  

The maximum number of keys which are stored on any single page. Not currently implemented.

minkeypage  

The minimum number of keys which are stored on any single page. This value is used to determine which keys are stored on overflow pages, that is, if a key or data item is longer than the pagesize divided by the minkeypage value, it is stored on overflow pages instead of in the page itself. If minkeypage is 0 (no minimum number of keys is specified) a value of 2 is used.

psize  

Page size is the size (in bytes) of the pages used for nodes in the tree. The minimum page size is 512 bytes and the maximum page size is 64K. If psize is 0 (no page size is specified) a page size is chosen based on the underlying file system I/O block size.

compare  

The compare field specified the key comparison function. It must return an integer less than, equal to, or greater than zero if the first key argument is considered to be respectively less than, equal to, or greater than the second key argument. The same comparison function must be used on a given tree every time it is opened. If compare is NULL (no comparison function is specified), the keys are compared lexically, with shorter keys considered less than longer keys.

prefix  

The prefix field specifies the prefix comparison function. If specified, this routine must return the number of bytes of the second key argument which are necessary to determine that it is greater than the first key argument. If the keys are equal, the key length should be returned. Note, the usefulness of this routine is very data dependent, but, in some data sets can produce significantly reduced tree sizes and search times. If prefix is NULL (no prefix function is specified), and no comparison function is specified, a default lexical comparison routine is used. If prefix is NULL and a comparison routine is specified, no prefix comparison is done.

lorder  

The byte order for integers in the stored database metadata. The number should represent the order as an integer; for example, big endian order would be the number 4,321. If lorder is 0 (no order is specified) the current host order is used.

If the file already exists (and the O_TRUNC flag is not specified), the values specified for the parameters flags, lorder and psize are ignored in favor of the values used when the tree was created.

Forward sequential scans of a tree are from the least key to the greatest.

Space freed up by deleting key/data pairs from the tree is never reclaimed, although it is normally made available for reuse. This means that the btree storage structure is grow-only. The only solutions are to avoid excessive deletions, or to create a fresh tree periodically from a scan of an existing one.

Searches, insertions, and deletions in a btree all complete in O(logbase(N)) where base is the average fill factor. Often, inserting ordered data into btrees results in a low fill factor. This implementation has been modified to make ordered insertion the best case, resulting in a much better than normal page fill factor.


CONFORMANCE

4.4BSD.


AVAILABILITY

PTC MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers
PTC MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers 64-Bit Edition
PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers
PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers 64-Bit Edition


SEE ALSO

Miscellaneous:
db_hash, db_recno


PTC MKS Toolkit 10.4 Documentation Build 39.