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BTREE(3)		     Library Functions Manual			BTREE(3)

NAME
     btree -- btree database access method

SYNOPSIS
     #include <sys/types.h>
     #include <db.h>

DESCRIPTION
     The  routine  dbopen()  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(3), this manual page describes only
     the btree specific information.

     The btree data structure is a sorted, balanced tree structure storing asso-
     ciated key/data pairs.

     The btree access method specific data structure provided to dbopen() is de-
     fined in the <db.h> include file as follows:

     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;

     The elements of this structure are as follows:

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

	     R_DUP   Permit duplicate keys in the tree, i.e.,  permit  insertion
		     if  the key to be inserted already exists in the tree.  The
		     default behavior, as described in dbopen(3),  is  to  over-
		     write 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 dupli-
		     cate keys into the tree will fail.

		     If the database contains duplicate keys, the order  of  re-
		     trieval  of  key/data pairs is undefined if the get routine
		     is used, however, seq routine calls with the R_CURSOR  flag
		     set  will 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 will allocate more
	     memory rather than fail.  Since every search examines the root page
	     of the tree, caching the most recently used pages substantially im-
	     proves 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 will be stored on any single page.
	     Not currently implemented.

     minkeypage
	     The minimum number of keys which will be stored on any single page.
	     This  value is used to determine which keys will be stored on over-
	     flow pages, i.e., if a key or data item is longer than the pagesize
	     divided by the minkeypage value, it  will	be  stored  on	overflow
	     pages  instead of in the page itself.  If minkeypage is 0 (no mini-
	     mum 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
	     Compare  is 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  lexi-
	     cally, with shorter keys considered less than longer keys.

     prefix  The  prefix  element  is the prefix comparison function.  If speci-
	     fied, 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 flags, lorder and psize arguments 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 ex-
     cessive deletions, or to create a fresh tree periodically from a scan of an
     existing one.

     Searches, insertions, and deletions in a btree will all complete  in  O  lg
     base  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.

ERRORS
     The btree access method routines may fail and set errno for any of the  er-
     rors specified for the library routine dbopen(3).

SEE ALSO
     dbopen(3), hash(3), mpool(3), recno(3)

     Douglas  Comer,  "The Ubiquitous B-tree", ACM Comput. Surv. 11, 2, 121-138,
     June 1979.

     Bayer and Unterauer, "Prefix B-trees", ACM Transactions  on  Database  Sys-
     tems, 1, Vol. 2, 11-26, March 1977.

     D. E. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming Vol. 3: Sorting and Searching,
     471-480, 1968.

BUGS
     Only big and little endian byte order is supported.

FreeBSD 15.1			 August 18, 1994			BTREE(3)

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