Asp Forum - ANN: KirbyBase 2.0

Jamey Cribbs

3/29/2005 1:43:00 AM

I would like to announce version 2.0 of KirbyBase, a small, pure-Ruby,
database management system that stores it's data in plain-text files.

You can download it at:
http://www.netpromi.com/files/KirbyBase_Ru...

You can find out more about KirbyBase for Ruby 2.0 at:
http://www.netpromi.com/kirbybase...

Version 2.0 is a radical departure from the 1.x series. It has been
practically re-written from scratch to be much more "Ruby-ish". The
most dramatic change is in how query's are expressed. To specify a
select query, you can now use a Ruby code block, i.e. anything that can
be converted into a Proc object. For example, if you had a database
table holding data on WWII planes and you wanted to select all United
States planes that had a speed greater than 400mph, the code would look
like:

plane_tbl.select { |r| r.country =~ /US/ and r. speed > 400 }

I like doing this much more than building an SQL string. :-)

Updates, deletes, and inserts work much the same way. A lot of effort
has been put into making the all powerful Ruby code block do a lot of
the heavy lifting.

I would like to publicly thank Hal Fulton for all of his
input/feedback/suggestions/ideas for version 2.0. Hal was a major
impetus for my getting this version done. Additionally, he was
instrumental in keeping me focused on making this version feel much more
like a part of Ruby. That said, any bugs/design flaws/code inteptitude
is solely my responsibility, not Hal's!

I hope you give this new version of KirbyBase a try. If you do, please
let me know what you think.

Thanks.

Jamey Cribbs
jcribbs@twmi.rr.com

3 Answers

Bill Guindon

3/29/2005 3:13:00 AM

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 10:43:25 +0900, Jamey Cribbs <jcribbs@twmi.rr.com> wrote:
> I would like to announce version 2.0 of KirbyBase, a small, pure-Ruby,
> database management system that stores it's data in plain-text files.
>
> You can download it at:
> http://www.netpromi.com/files/KirbyBase_Ru...
>
> You can find out more about KirbyBase for Ruby 2.0 at:
> http://www.netpromi.com/kirbybase...
>
> Version 2.0 is a radical departure from the 1.x series. It has been
> practically re-written from scratch to be much more "Ruby-ish". The
> most dramatic change is in how query's are expressed. To specify a
> select query, you can now use a Ruby code block, i.e. anything that can
> be converted into a Proc object. For example, if you had a database
> table holding data on WWII planes and you wanted to select all United
> States planes that had a speed greater than 400mph, the code would look
> like:
>
> plane_tbl.select { |r| r.country =~ /US/ and r. speed > 400 }
>
> I like doing this much more than building an SQL string. :-)
>
> Updates, deletes, and inserts work much the same way. A lot of effort
> has been put into making the all powerful Ruby code block do a lot of
> the heavy lifting.
>
> I would like to publicly thank Hal Fulton for all of his
> input/feedback/suggestions/ideas for version 2.0. Hal was a major
> impetus for my getting this version done. Additionally, he was
> instrumental in keeping me focused on making this version feel much more
> like a part of Ruby. That said, any bugs/design flaws/code inteptitude
> is solely my responsibility, not Hal's!
>
> I hope you give this new version of KirbyBase a try. If you do, please
> let me know what you think.

Having read the docs, I love the api for it. Very cool stuff :)
http://www.netpromi.com/files/kirbybaserubym...

Out of curiosity, can you 'declare' sorts to be ascending by using a '+'?

Can this:
result_set = plane_tbl.select(:name, :country, :speed).sort(:country, -:speed)

Be written like this?:
result_set = plane_tbl.select(:name, :country,
:speed).sort(+:country, -:speed)

Also out of curiosity, have you thought about adding indexing? Could
just use a different file extension, and rebuild them while 'packing'.

> Thanks.
>
> Jamey Cribbs
> jcribbs@twmi.rr.com
>
>

--
Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla)

Jamey Cribbs

3/29/2005 3:28:00 AM

Bill Guindon wrote:

>Out of curiosity, can you 'declare' sorts to be ascending by using a '+'?
>
>Can this:
> result_set = plane_tbl.select(:name, :country, :speed).sort(:country, -:speed)
>
>Be written like this?:
> result_set = plane_tbl.select(:name, :country,
>:speed).sort(+:country, -:speed)
>
>
>
Currently, no. The default is ascending. However, if there is a need
to explicitly specify ascending, I could add it.

>Also out of curiosity, have you thought about adding indexing? Could
>just use a different file extension, and rebuild them while 'packing'.
>
>
I've thought about it, but that's about it. :-)
If we are talking about adding it for speed purposes, right now,
KirbyBase is reasonably fast. While coding this new version, I did a
very rough benchmark on a 80,000 record table. The query did a select
on a date range and returned 23,000 records. I coded the query in both
KirbyBase and SQLite and was mildly surprised to see KirbyBase finish
about 2 seconds faster than SQLite. Granted, this test was EXTREMELY
un-scientific and I am not trying to say in any way that I think
KirbyBase can match SQLite's performance. I just wanted to point out
that, for small databases, KirbyBase feels pretty responsive, so I am
not sure if there is a need right now to increase the complexity of
KirbyBase by adding indexing solely for speed.

If there would be other good reasons for adding indexing, I'm all ears. :-)

Jamey

Bill Guindon

3/29/2005 3:51:00 AM

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 12:27:51 +0900, Jamey Cribbs <jcribbs@twmi.rr.com> wrote:
> Bill Guindon wrote:
>
> >Out of curiosity, can you 'declare' sorts to be ascending by using a '+'?
> >
> >Can this:
> > result_set = plane_tbl.select(:name, :country, :speed).sort(:country, -:speed)
> >
> >Be written like this?:
> > result_set = plane_tbl.select(:name, :country,
> >:speed).sort(+:country, -:speed)
> >
> Currently, no. The default is ascending. However, if there is a need
> to explicitly specify ascending, I could add it.

No "need", just like to explicitly declare things when I can. I seek
symmetry :)

> >Also out of curiosity, have you thought about adding indexing? Could
> >just use a different file extension, and rebuild them while 'packing'.
> >
> >
> I've thought about it, but that's about it. :-)
> If we are talking about adding it for speed purposes, right now,
> KirbyBase is reasonably fast. While coding this new version, I did a
> very rough benchmark on a 80,000 record table. The query did a select
> on a date range and returned 23,000 records. I coded the query in both
> KirbyBase and SQLite and was mildly surprised to see KirbyBase finish
> about 2 seconds faster than SQLite. Granted, this test was EXTREMELY
> un-scientific and I am not trying to say in any way that I think
> KirbyBase can match SQLite's performance. I just wanted to point out
> that, for small databases, KirbyBase feels pretty responsive, so I am
> not sure if there is a need right now to increase the complexity of
> KirbyBase by adding indexing solely for speed.

Nice results, even if it strays a bit, still sounds good.

> If there would be other good reasons for adding indexing, I'm all ears. :-)

To combine search with sorts? If I can index on date descending, name
ascending, speed descending, etc. Seems the index would be faster
than doing the sorts. Could be wrong tho'.

--
Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla)

comp.lang.ruby

ANN: KirbyBase 2.0

Jamey Cribbs

Bill Guindon

Jamey Cribbs

Bill Guindon

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