Description

Ruby bindings for Berkeley DB versions 4.2-4.8.

Installation

From Git

You can check out the latest source from git:

git clone git://github.com/DenisKnauf/bdb.git

As a Gem

At the moment this library is not available on Rubyforge. To install it as a gem, do the following:

sudo gem install dk-bdb

For Berkeley DB v4.7 installed from MacPorts do the following:

sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" gem install dk-bdb

This assumes you're on OS X and BerkeleyDB wasn't compiled as a universal binary.

Sample Usage

env = Bdb::Env.new(0)
env_flags =  Bdb::DB_CREATE |    # Create the environment if it does not already exist.
             Bdb::DB_INIT_TXN  | # Initialize transactions
             Bdb::DB_INIT_LOCK | # Initialize locking.
             Bdb::DB_INIT_LOG  | # Initialize logging
             Bdb::DB_INIT_MPOOL  # Initialize the in-memory cache.
env.open(File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), 'tmp'), env_flags, 0);

db = env.db
db.open(nil, 'db1.db', nil, Bdb::Db::BTREE, Bdb::DB_CREATE | Bdb::DB_AUTO_COMMIT, 0)    

txn = env.txn_begin(nil, 0)
db.put(txn, 'key', 'value', 0)
txn.commit(0)

value = db.get(nil, 'key', nil, 0)

db.close(0)
env.close

API

This interface is most closely based on the DB4 C api and tries to maintain close interface proximity. That API is published by Oracle.

All function arguments systematically omit the leading DB handles and TXN handles. A few calls omit the flags parameter when the documentation indicates that no flag values are used - cursor.close is one.

Alternative API

You can use SBDB, too. It is easier to use, but base on this library.

Notes

The defines generator is imperfect and includes some defines that are not flags. While it could be improved, it is easier to delete the incorrect ones. Thus, if you decide to rebuild the defines, you will need to edit the resulting file. This may be necessary if using a different release of DB4 than the ones the authors developed against. In nearly every case the defines generator works flawlessly.

The authors have put all possible caution into ensuring that DB and Ruby cooperate. The memory access was one aspect carefully considered. Since Ruby copies when doing String#new, all key/data retrieval from DB is done with a 0 flag, meaning that DB will be responsible. See this news group posting about the effect of that.

The only other design consideration of consequence was associate. The prior version used a Ruby thread local variable and kept track of the current database in use. The authors decided to take a simpler approach since Ruby is green threads. A global array stores the VALUE of the Proc for a given association by the file descriptor number of the underlying database. This is looked up when the first layer callback is made. It would have been better considered if DB allowed the passing of a (void *) user data into the alloc that would be supplied during callback. So far this design has not produced any problems.