This file contains the description of new database structures used internally by pipsdbm. The idea is to improve pipsdbm performances by providing an underlying fast hash-table-based implementation instead of the list used externally by pipsdbm API, since lists do not scale up well with the number of modules.
Conceptually, the pipsdbm database manages resources. However, resources are owned by a module and have a kind (from the pipsmake point of view), and they together form the unique resource identification. After discussing it for a while among PIPS designers, it was decided that pipsdbm should know about this subclassification of resources, and this is taken into account by these private pipsdbm data structures.
All domain private to pipsdbm have name prefixed by db_.
The exact nature of a resource as defined by a user of the library is not known by pipsdbm API. So all pointers to user resources, e.g. CODE or CALLERS, are typed as void *, i.e. db_void in Newgen declarations.
external db_void
The key for the resource descriptor management is a string. However they are not managed by functions, which need a full newgen domain. Hence this small tabulated domain associates a unique object to a string. It can be used for both owners, i.e. module names, and resource type, i.e. strings. For instance, all occurences of the string "foo" are reduced to one.
tabulated db_symbol = name:string
A resource descriptor, known here as db_resource, contains several fields, similar to the fields of data structure resource defined in database. First a pointer called pointer to the resource in memory. This pointer is associated to a logical time, time, and maybe a file time, file_time, to check for possibly externally modified files when PIPS is used interactively or is coupled to other tools using the PIPS workspace files. Each resource has a status, called db_status. It may be loaded and the pointer field db_pointer actually points to the resource data structure in memory, or unloaded, stored (the pointer may point to the name of the resource?), or being required by pipsmake but not yet produced. For optimization, a resource can also be loaded and stored at the same time. Note that a key information, whether the resource is up-to-date or not, is not stored here as it depends on the rules managed by pipsmake at a higher level.
db_status = loaded:unit + stored:unit + required:unit + loaded_and_stored:unit
db_resource = pointer:db_void x db_status x time:int x file_time:int
Note the differences with the domain resource and status. The fields name and owner_name are gone because they are used as access keys. The field db_status is more complex than the field status and it does not contain a pointer to the user data structure. This pointer is moved up into db_resource.
Note that objects of type db_resource are internal to pipsdbm. However, they are used under the name res_id to manage the make_cache of pipsdbm.
The PIPS resource descriptors are stored and retrieved internally with a two-level mapping scheme. The first one uses the owner name, a.k.a. the module name, and the second one the resource kind name. Note that module and resource names are both managed as db_symbol.
The owner name is used to reach all resources associated to a given module:
db_resources = db_symbol -> db_owned_resources
Then the different resources can be accessed thanks to their resource kind names:
db_owned_resources = db_symbol -> db_resource