Reiser4 as positional B-Tree

Reiser4 as positional B-Tree

[Gregor Zeitlinger]

Hi,

I've already been on this mailing list a year ago. I was wondering wheater
I could make my native xml database a file plugin in reiser4.

Now, that the code base is much more matured and that reiser4 is almost
ready (as I understand), this seems much more feasable.

Those are my questions
1) As part of my xml database, I still need a positional B-Tree. Since
files in reiserfs are stored in a (kinda) B+-Tree, I was wondering wheater
a positional B-Tree could be made a file plugin. It's basically the same
as the unix file plugin, with the exception that you'd need the additional
operation of inserting (not overwriting) data in the middle of a file.

2) If the plugin architecture is flexible enough, I'm wondering wheater I
could port my xml database to being a file plugin. It uses a custom page
layout and custom balance, split and merge algorithms. Also, I use c++,
but the source could be ported to c, since I don't make heavy use of
object oriented features. I haven't put the source code online, since it's
not mature enough for that, but I can give to anyone interested.

-- 
Gregor Zeitlinger
gregor@zeitlinger.de

Re: Reiser4 as positional B-Tree

[Hans Reiser]

Gregor Zeitlinger wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I've already been on this mailing list a year ago. I was wondering wheater
>I could make my native xml database a file plugin in reiser4.
>
>Now, that the code base is much more matured and that reiser4 is almost
>ready (as I understand), this seems much more feasable.
>
>Those are my questions
>1) As part of my xml database, I still need a positional B-Tree. Since
>files in reiserfs are stored in a (kinda) B+-Tree, I was wondering wheater
>a positional B-Tree could be made a file plugin. It's basically the same
>as the unix file plugin, with the exception that you'd need the additional
>operation of inserting (not overwriting) data in the middle of a file.
>
>2) If the plugin architecture is flexible enough, I'm wondering wheater I
>could port my xml database to being a file plugin. It uses a custom page
>layout and custom balance, split and merge algorithms. Also, I use c++,
>but the source could be ported to c, since I don't make heavy use of
>object oriented features. I haven't put the source code online, since it's
>not mature enough for that, but I can give to anyone interested.
>
>  
>
Please send a definition of a positional B-tree. Also indicate whether 
you are an individual vs. an organization that might be interested in 
sponsoring our creating a plugin of that kind to your specifications. 
(Yes, we are very poor this month, so I ask questions of that kind at 
every opportunity....;-) )

Purely guessing at what a positional B-tree is, I would say probably 
yes, and it would probably be valuable for the filesystem generally.

-- 
Hans 

Re: Reiser4 as positional B-Tree

[Gregor Zeitlinger]

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Hans Reiser wrote:
> Please send a definition of a positional B-tree.
It's like a B+-Tree but handles strings. You can insert, search and delete
strings according to their poisition in the tree. It's basically like a
unix file with the capability of inserting and removing text in the middle
of a file.

> Also indicate whether you are an individual vs. an organization
I'm doing the project as a university project.

> that might be interested in sponsoring our creating a plugin of that
> kind to your specifications.
If the project turns out to be successfull, other students might work on
it, yes. Other than that - our university is located in Berlin which is
broke...

-- 
Gregor Zeitlinger
gregor@zeitlinger.de