man(7)

NAME
wgdb - shared memory database library

SYNOPSIS
[see Doc folder and http://whitedb.org for the full manual]

DESCRIPTION
WhiteDB is a lightweight NoSQL database library written in C, operating fully in main memory. There is no server process. Data is read and written directly from/to shared memory, no sockets are used between WhiteDB and the application program. All the data is accessible to separate processes.

Each database record is a tuple of N elements, encoded in WhiteDB-s simple compact format. You can store both conventional datatypes and direct pointers to records: the latter enables highly efficient traversal of complex data.

Each element is encoded as an integer: configurable as either 32 or 64 bits. The integers in the tuple encode values directly or as pointers. Columns have no type: any encoded value can be stored to any field. You can always get a direct pointer to a record, store it into a field of a record or use it in your own program directly. A record pointer can thus be used as an automatically assigned id of the record which requires no search at all to access the record.

The low bits of an integer in a record indicate the type of data. Anything which does not fit into the remainining bits is allocated separately and pointed to by the same integer.

We use a database level lock implemented via a task-fair atomic spinlock queue for concurrency control, but alternative faster and simpler preference policies can be configured: either a reader-preference or a writer-preference spinlock. We provide safe atomic updates of simple values without taking a write lock.

The simplest index provided is a T-tree index on any field containing any mixture of objects (integers, strings, etc). The index is automatically maintained when records are added, deleted or changed.

Two mechanisms are available for storing the shared memory database to disk. First, the whole database can be dumped and restored. Second, all inserts, deletions and updates can be logged to a file.

SEE ALSO
The Whitedb web site can be found at:
              http://whitedb.org

REPORTING PROBLEMS
Please use either https://github.com/priitj/whitedb or email to authors.

AUTHORS
Copyright (C) 2008-2014 Tanel Tammet (tanel.tammet@gmail.com), Priit Järv (priit@whitedb.org)