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Define explicit snapshots #42

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Define explicit snapshots #42

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@vweevers vweevers commented Sep 25, 2022

This is a documentation-only PR, acting as an RFC. I opted for a token-based approach (as suggested by Rod Vagg in Level/community#45) instead of a dedicated snapshot API surface (as suggested by @juliangruber in Level/community#47). Main reasons for not choosing the latter:

  • It would be a third API surface. We have the main database API surface which is roughly equal to that of a sublevel, and would now add another API surface which only has read methods, e.g. db.snapshot().get(). If you could pass around a snapshot as if it was a regular database (like you can with sublevels) then I'd be cool with it. But for that to happen, we'd have to implement write methods and thus transactions as well, which I consider to be out of scope although transactions are in fact a use case of snapshots.
  • It would have a higher complexity once you factor in sublevels. I.e. to make db.sublevel().snapshot().get(key) read from the snapshot but also prefix the given key. By instead doing db.sublevel().get(key, { snapshot }), the sublevel can just forward that snapshot option to its parent database.
  • Furthermore, with the token-based approach, you can pass a snapshot to multiple sublevels, which cleanly solves the main use case of retrieving data from an index (see example).

I renamed the existing snapshot mechanism to "implicit snapshots" and attempted to clarify the behavior of those as well.

Several related issues can be closed, because this PR:


<small>

1. Several implementations currently create the snapshot asynchronously (moments after a call like `db.get()` returns) which creates a minor race issue. We intend to fix that in a next major release of `abstract-level` assuming it can be done without a significant performance impact. The [abstract test suite](#test-suite) currently does not assert whether snapshots are created synchronously.
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Update this once v2 is out (#54).

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