[fpc-devel] Warning for sqldb and fpc 2.1.1 users

[Bram Kuijvenhoven]

Micha Nelissen wrote:
> On Sat, 01 Apr 2006 18:33:10 -0300
> Luiz Americo Pereira Camara <pascalive at bol.com.br> wrote:
> 
>>>> And what about recno? Just define it as -1, or do a quick count to get
>>>> the current record number?
>>>>     
>> Take a look at TCustomSqliteDataset implementation. In its 
>> implementation a count is done each time.
>>> Store the recno with/in the linked list entry ?
>>>
>>>   
>> It has two drawbacks: increase memory usage and when inserting, deleting 
>> all following records must be updated.
> 
> An array of records has the same problem, no ? So these are not drawbacks
> IMHO.

I think, when using an array, the RecNo is implicit from the position in the array.


Implementing the RecordCount property is not so much a problem (using increments/decrements on changes), but updating RecNo's can be troublesome I think.

I can imagine it is possible to store some kind of relative RecNo's with only a sparse subset of the record in a smart way, allowing O(log N) times for inserting/deleting records and O(log N) time for getting RecNo's. I do not know whether this is indeed possible, and the implementation would not be easy I think.

Another option is to update the RecNo's only when requested, i.e.:
 - each record stores a record number
 - when inserting/deleting, all RecNo's from that record on are marked as 'dirty' (this needs only storage of a LowestDirtyRecNoIndex)
 - when requesting the RecNo of an item with 'dirty' stored RecNo, one could recalculate the RecNo's of record LowestDirtyRecNoIndex until the record whose RecNo is requested at that time

To prevent the memory overhead of storing RecNo's, it is even possible to only allocate the RecNo storage space only when some RecNo is retrieved for the first time. This allows people to save memory by never using RecNo, but still use RecNo if they really need.

Of course, using Bookmarks is a very good substitute for RecNo's! And if one wants to enumerate the records, one can still do so by keeping a private counter while traversing the dataset with calls to Next. (In one of my applications I even have an array of Bookmarks -- I think I overlooked the RecNo property, which would take away the necessity of using such an array, if I'm understanding things correctly).


Regards,

Bram Kuijvenhoven