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When information is removed from an SQLite database such that one or
more pages are no longer needed, those pages are added to a list of
free pages so that they can be reused later when new information is
added.  This subsection describes the structure of this freelist.
</p>

<p>
The 32-bit integer beginning at byte-offset 52 in page 1 of the database
contains the address of the first page in a linked list of free pages.
If there are no free pages available, this integer has a value of 0.
The 32-bit integer at byte-offset 56 in page 1 contains the number of
free pages on the freelist.
</p>

<p>
The freelist contains a trunk and many branches.  The trunk of
the freelist is composed of overflow pages.  That is to say, each page
contains a single 32-bit integer at byte offset 0 which
is the page number of the next page on the freelist trunk.
The payload area
of each trunk page is used to record pointers to branch pages. 
The first 32-bit integer in the payload area of a trunk page
is the number of branch pages to follow (between 0 and 254)
and each subsequent 32-bit integer is a page number for a branch page.
The following diagram shows the structure of a trunk freelist page:
</p>

<blockquote>
<table border=1 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=5>
<tr>
<td align="center" width=20>0</td>
<td align="center" width=20>1</td>
<td align="center" width=20>2</td>
<td align="center" width=20>3</td>
<td align="center" width=20>4</td>
<td align="center" width=20>5</td>
<td align="center" width=20>6</td>
<td align="center" width=20>7</td>
<td align="center" width=200>8 ... 1023</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan=4>Next trunk page</td>
<td align="center" colspan=4># of branch pages</td>
<td align="center" colspan=1>Page numbers for branch pages</td>
</tr>
</table>
</blockquote>

<p>
It is important to note that only the pages on the trunk of the freelist
contain pointers to other pages.  The branch pages contain no
data whatsoever.  The fact that the branch pages are completely
blank allows for an important optimization in the paging layer.  When
a branch page is removed from the freelist to be reused, it is not
necessary to write the original content of that page into the rollback
journal.  The branch page contained no data to begin with, so there is
no need to restore the page in the event of a rollback.  Similarly,
when a page is not longer needed and is added to the freelist as a branch
page, it is not necessary to write the content of that page
into the database file.
Again, the page contains no real data so it is not necessary to record the
content of that page.  By reducing the amount of disk I/O required,
these two optimizations allow some database operations
to go four to six times faster than they would otherwise.
</p>

<h3>4.0 &nbsp; The Schema Layer</h3>

<p>
The schema layer implements an SQL database on top of one or more
b-trees and keeps track of the root page numbers for all b-trees.
Where the b-tree layer provides only unformatted data storage with
a unique key, the schema layer allows each entry to contain multiple
columns.  The schema layer also allows indices and non-unique key values.
</p>

<p>
The schema layer implements two separate data storage abstractions:
tables and indices.  Each table and each index uses its own b-tree
but they use the b-tree capabilities in different ways.  For a table,
the b-tree key is a unique 4-byte integer and the b-tree data is the
content of the table row, encoded so that columns can be separately
extracted.  For indices, the b-tree key varies in size depending on the
size of the fields being indexed and the b-tree data is empty.
</p>

<h4>4.1 &nbsp; SQL Table Implementation Details</h4>

<p>Each row of an SQL table is stored in a single b-tree entry.
The b-tree key is a 4-byte big-endian integer that is the ROWID
or INTEGER PRIMARY KEY for that table row.
The key is stored in a big-endian format so
that keys will sort in numerical order using memcmp() function.</p>

<p>The content of a table row is stored in the data portion of
the corresponding b-tree table.  The content is encoded to allow
individual columns of the row to be extracted as necessary.  Assuming
that the table has N columns, the content is encoded as N+1 offsets
followed by N column values, as follows:
</p>

<blockquote>
<table border=1 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=5>
<tr>
<td>offset 0</td>
<td>offset 1</td>
<td><b>...</b></td>
<td>offset N-1</td>
<td>offset N</td>
<td>value 0</td>
<td>value 1</td>
<td><b>...</b></td>
<td>value N-1</td>
</tr>
</table>
</blockquote>

<p>
The offsets can be either 8-bit, 16-bit, or 24-bit integers depending
on how much data is to be stored.  If the total size of the content
is less than 256 bytes then 8-bit offsets are used.  If the total size
of the b-tree data is less than 65536 then 16-bit offsets are used.
24-bit offsets are used otherwise.  Offsets are always little-endian,
which means that the least significant byte occurs first.
</p>

<p>
Data is stored as a nul-terminated string.  Any empty string consists
of just the nul terminator.  A NULL value is an empty string with no
nul-terminator.  Thus a NULL value occupies zero bytes and an empty string
occupies 1 byte.
</p>

<p>
Column values are stored in the order that they appear in the CREATE TABLE
statement.  The offsets at the beginning of the record contain the
byte index of the corresponding column value.  Thus, Offset 0 contains
the byte index for Value 0, Offset 1 contains the byte offset
of Value 1, and so forth.  The number of bytes in a column value can
always be found by subtracting offsets.  This allows NULLs to be
recovered from the record unambiguously.
</p>

<p>
Most columns are stored in the b-tree data as described above.
The one exception is column that has type INTEGER PRIMARY KEY.
INTEGER PRIMARY KEY columns correspond to the 4-byte b-tree key.
When an SQL statement attempts to read the INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
the 4-byte b-tree key is read rather than information out of the
b-tree data.  But there is still an Offset associated with the
INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, just like any other column.  But the Value
associated with that offset is always NULL.
</p>

<h4>4.2 &nbsp; SQL Index Implementation Details</h4>

<p>
SQL indices are implement using a b-tree in which the key is used
but the data is always empty.  The purpose of an index is to map
one or more column values into the ROWID for the table entry that
contains those column values.
</p>

<p>
Each b-tree in an index consists of one or more column values followed
by a 4-byte ROWID.  Each column value is nul-terminated (even NULL values)
and begins with a single character that indicates the datatype for that
column value.  Only three datatypes are supported: NULL, Number, and
Text.  NULL values are encoded as the character 'a' followed by the
nul terminator.  Numbers are encoded as the character 'b' followed by
a string that has been crafted so that sorting the string using memcmp()
will sort the corresponding numbers in numerical order.  (See the
sqliteRealToSortable() function in util.c of the SQLite sources for
additional information on this encoding.)  Numbers are also nul-terminated.
Text values consists of the character 'c' followed by a copy of the
text string and a nul-terminator.  These encoding rules result in
NULLs being sorted first, followed by numerical values in numerical
order, followed by text values in lexicographical order.
</p>

<h4>4.4 &nbsp; SQL Schema Storage And Root B-Tree Page Numbers</h4>

<p>
The database schema is stored in the database in a special tabled named
"sqlite_master" and which always has a root b-tree page number of 2.
This table contains the original CREATE TABLE,
CREATE INDEX, CREATE VIEW, and CREATE TRIGGER statements used to define
the database to begin with.  Whenever an SQLite database is opened,
the sqlite_master table is scanned from beginning to end and 
all the original CREATE statements are played back through the parser
in order to reconstruct an in-memory representation of the database
schema for use in subsequent command parsing.  For each CREATE TABLE
and CREATE INDEX statement, the root page number for the corresponding
b-tree is also recorded in the sqlite_master table so that SQLite will
know where to look for the appropriate b-tree.
</p>

<p>
SQLite users can query the sqlite_master table just like any other table
in the database.  But the sqlite_master table cannot be directly written.
The sqlite_master table is automatically updated in response to CREATE
and DROP statements but it cannot be changed using INSERT, UPDATE, or
DELETE statements as that would risk corrupting the database.
</p>

<p>
SQLite stores temporary tables and indices in a separate
file from the main database file.  The temporary table database file
is the same structure as the main database file.  The schema table
for the temporary tables is stored on page 2 just as in the main
database.  But the schema table for the temporary database named
"sqlite_temp_master" instead of "sqlite_master".  Other than the
name change, it works exactly the same.
</p>

<h4>4.4 &nbsp; Schema Version Numbering And Other Meta-Information</h4>

<p>
The nine 32-bit integers that are stored beginning at byte offset
60 of Page 1 in the b-tree layer are passed up into the schema layer
and used for versioning and configuration information.  The meaning
of the first four integers is shown below.  The other five are currently
unused.
</p>

<ol>
<li>The schema version number</li>
<li>The format version number</li>
<li>The recommended pager cache size</li>
<li>The safety level</li>
</ol>

<p>
The first meta-value, the schema version number, is used to detect when
the schema of the database is changed by a CREATE or DROP statement.
Recall that when a database is first opened the sqlite_master table is
scanned and an internal representation of the tables, indices, views,
and triggers for the database is built in memory.  This internal
representation is used for all subsequent SQL command parsing and
execution.  But what if another process were to change the schema
by adding or removing a table, index, view, or trigger?  If the original
process were to continue using the old schema, it could potentially
corrupt the database by writing to a table that no longer exists.
To avoid this problem, the schema version number is changed whenever
a CREATE or DROP statement is executed.  Before each command is
executed, the current schema version number for the database file
is compared against the schema version number from when the sqlite_master
table was last read.  If those numbers are different, the internal
schema representation is erased and the sqlite_master table is reread
to reconstruct the internal schema representation.
(Calls to sqlite_exec() generally return SQLITE_SCHEMA when this happens.)
</p>

<p>
The second meta-value is the schema format version number.  This
number tells what version of the schema layer should be used to
interpret the file.  There have been changes to the schema layer
over time and this number is used to detect when an older database
file is being processed by a newer version of the library.
As of this writing (SQLite version 2.7.0) the current format version
is "4".
</p>

<p>
The third meta-value is the recommended pager cache size as set 
by the DEFAULT_CACHE_SIZE pragma.  If the value is positive it
means that synchronous behavior is enable (via the DEFAULT_SYNCHRONOUS
pragma) and if negative it means that synchronous behavior is
disabled.
</p>

<p>
The fourth meta-value is safety level added in version 2.8.0.
A value of 1 corresponds to a SYNCHRONOUS setting of OFF.  In other
words, SQLite does not pause to wait for journal data to reach the disk
surface before overwriting pages of the database.  A value of 2 corresponds
to a SYNCHRONOUS setting of NORMAL.  A value of 3 corresponds to a
SYNCHRONOUS setting of FULL. If the value is 0, that means it has not
been initialized so the default synchronous setting of NORMAL is used.
</p>

<hr><small<i>
This page last modified 2007/11/12 14:28:09 UTC
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