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authorPieter Wuille <pieter.wuille@gmail.com>2017-06-09 19:24:30 -0700
committerPieter Wuille <pieter.wuille@gmail.com>2017-06-09 19:24:30 -0700
commite4030ab4f47065c362901109c74ca8e791c2de0a (patch)
treec1678f5a72d3888ad5e4621073bbe4fa698883b5 /src/leveldb/doc/log_format.md
parent1b708f2cf3e6e6a17c5b6dbf2909a2ed2e35755a (diff)
parentcf44e4ca7762742c6c3154447b40869ec9d041db (diff)
Update to LevelDB 1.20
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+leveldb Log format
+==================
+The log file contents are a sequence of 32KB blocks. The only exception is that
+the tail of the file may contain a partial block.
+
+Each block consists of a sequence of records:
+
+ block := record* trailer?
+ record :=
+ checksum: uint32 // crc32c of type and data[] ; little-endian
+ length: uint16 // little-endian
+ type: uint8 // One of FULL, FIRST, MIDDLE, LAST
+ data: uint8[length]
+
+A record never starts within the last six bytes of a block (since it won't fit).
+Any leftover bytes here form the trailer, which must consist entirely of zero
+bytes and must be skipped by readers.
+
+Aside: if exactly seven bytes are left in the current block, and a new non-zero
+length record is added, the writer must emit a FIRST record (which contains zero
+bytes of user data) to fill up the trailing seven bytes of the block and then
+emit all of the user data in subsequent blocks.
+
+More types may be added in the future. Some Readers may skip record types they
+do not understand, others may report that some data was skipped.
+
+ FULL == 1
+ FIRST == 2
+ MIDDLE == 3
+ LAST == 4
+
+The FULL record contains the contents of an entire user record.
+
+FIRST, MIDDLE, LAST are types used for user records that have been split into
+multiple fragments (typically because of block boundaries). FIRST is the type
+of the first fragment of a user record, LAST is the type of the last fragment of
+a user record, and MIDDLE is the type of all interior fragments of a user
+record.
+
+Example: consider a sequence of user records:
+
+ A: length 1000
+ B: length 97270
+ C: length 8000
+
+**A** will be stored as a FULL record in the first block.
+
+**B** will be split into three fragments: first fragment occupies the rest of
+the first block, second fragment occupies the entirety of the second block, and
+the third fragment occupies a prefix of the third block. This will leave six
+bytes free in the third block, which will be left empty as the trailer.
+
+**C** will be stored as a FULL record in the fourth block.
+
+----
+
+## Some benefits over the recordio format:
+
+1. We do not need any heuristics for resyncing - just go to next block boundary
+ and scan. If there is a corruption, skip to the next block. As a
+ side-benefit, we do not get confused when part of the contents of one log
+ file are embedded as a record inside another log file.
+
+2. Splitting at approximate boundaries (e.g., for mapreduce) is simple: find the
+ next block boundary and skip records until we hit a FULL or FIRST record.
+
+3. We do not need extra buffering for large records.
+
+## Some downsides compared to recordio format:
+
+1. No packing of tiny records. This could be fixed by adding a new record type,
+ so it is a shortcoming of the current implementation, not necessarily the
+ format.
+
+2. No compression. Again, this could be fixed by adding new record types.