hamsterdb Embedded Storage 2.0.2               Sun Apr 22 14:47:02 CEST 2012
(C) Christoph Rupp, chris@crupp.de; http://www.hamsterdb.com

This is the README file of hamsterdb Embedded Storage.

Contents:

1. About

hamsterdb Embedded Storage is a database engine written in ANSI C. It supports 
a B+Tree index structure, uses memory mapped I/O (if available), 
fast Cursors and variable length keys and can create In-Memory Databases.

With this release hamsterdb is now thread safe. Boost (http://www.boost.org)
is now required for building the sources.
Approximate matching is now enabled for ham_cursor_find.

2. Changes

New Features
* Approximate matching now works with ham_cursor_find
* hamsterdb is now thread safe

Bugfixes
* Fixed a buffer overrun in the freelist

Other Changes
* Several code cleanups; more modules were converted to C++


To see a list of all changes, look in the file ChangeLog.

3. Roadmap

- more transactional stuff (i.e. recreate pending transactions when 
    recovering from a crash)
- fine-grained locking for faster concurrent access

4. Features

- Very fast sorted B+Tree with variable length keys
- Can run as an in-memory database
- Supports multiple databases in one file
- Supports record number databases ("auto-increment")
- Supports duplicate keys (with sorting)
- Support for logging and recovery
- Support for unlimited number of parallel Transactions
- Support for partial reading/writing of records
- Support for network access (remote databases) through http
- Very fast database cursors 
- Configurable page size, cache size and index key size
- Runs on Linux, Unices, Microsoft Windows, Windows CE and on many
    architectures (also embedded and SPARC)
- Endian-independent file format
- Uses memory mapped I/O for fast disk access (but falls back to read/write if
    mmap is not available)
- Uses 64bit file pointers and supports huge files (>2 GB)
- Easy to use and well-documented
- Supports rudimentary live-reorganization by automatically
    merging freelist entries
- Remote access with embeddable server
- Open source and released under the GPL 2.0 or later
- Supports AES encryption and zlib compression
- Wrappers for C++, Python, Java and .NET

5. Known Issues/Bugs

None.

6. Compiling 

6.1 Linux and Cygwin/Win32

To compile hamsterdb Embedded Storage, run ./configure, make, make install.

Run `./configure --help' for more options (i.e. static/dynamic library, 
build with debugging symbols etc).

6.2 Microsoft Visual Studio 8

A Solution file is provided for Microsoft Visual C++ 2005:
'win32/hamsterdb.sln'. It compiles a static and a dynamic library. 
Please read the README.TXT file in the win32 directory.
All libraries can be downloaded precompiled from the hamsterdb webpage.

To download Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition for free, go to
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualc/default.aspx.

6.3 Dependencies

hamsterdb will compile out of the box. On Unix, however, remote functionality
will be disabled if libcurl and Google protobuf SDKs are not installed. If
you want to include remote functionality, then you have to download the 
dependencies from here:
    http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/
    http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/
    http://www.boost.org
On Ubuntu, you can install the following packages:
    protobuf-compiler
    libprotobuf-dev
    libcurl-dev
    libboost-dev

For Windows, precompiled libcurl/protobuf libraries are available on 
hamsterdb.com.

7. Testing and Example Code

Make automatically compiles several example programs in the directory
'samples'. To see hamsterdb Embedded Storage in action, just run 'samples/db1' 
or any other sample. (or 'win32/out/samples/db1/db1.exe' on Windows platforms).

8. API Documentation

The header files in 'include/ham' have extensive comments. Also, a doxygen
script is available; run 'make doc' to start doxygen. The generated
documentation is also available on the hamsterdb web page.

9. Other Ways to Compile hamsterdb Embedded Storage

If you want to compile hamsterdb without using the provided ./configure
environment, you have to set some preprocessor macros:

DEBUG                   enable debugging output and diagnostic checks (slow!)
HAM_LITTLE_ENDIAN       compile for little endian machines (i.e. x86)
HAM_BIG_ENDIAN          compile for big endian machines (most other
                            architectures)
HAM_32BIT               compile for 32bit (alias: WIN32)
HAM_64BIT               compile for 64bit (alias: WIN64, also needs WIN32)
HAM_DISABLE_COMPRESSION build without support for zlib compression
HAM_DISABLE_ENCRYPTION  build without support for AES encryption
HAM_ENABLE_REMOTE       build with remote access (needs libcurl/protobuf)

Also, if you compile for windows, you have to compile the file 'src/os_win32.c',
and ignore the file 'src/os_posix.c'. Vice versa on non-Windows platforms.

10. Porting hamsterdb Embedded Storage

Porting hamsterdb Embedded Storage shouldn't be too difficult. All operating 
system dependend functions are declared in 'src/os.h' and defined 
in 'src/os_win32.c' or 'src/os_posix.c'. 
Other compiler- and OS-specific macros are in 'include/ham/types.h'. 
Most likely, these are the only files which have to be touched. Also see item 
9) for important macros. 

11. Licensing

hamsterdb Embedded Storage can be licensed on a per-developer basis for 
closed source applications. For more details, see 
http://hamsterdb.com/licensing and http://hamsterdb.com/store.

hamsterdb Embedded Storage is released under GPL2 or later. There are several 
exceptions for other open source licenses (see 
http://hamsterdb.com/licensing/exceptions for legal information and a license 
list).

12. Contact

Author of hamsterdb Embedded Storage is 
    Christoph Rupp
    Paul-Preuss-Str. 63
    80995 Muenchen/Germany
    email: chris@crupp.de
    web: http://www.hamsterdb.com

13. Other Copyrights

The AES library in '3rdparty/aes' is (C) Karl Malbrain, malbrain@yahoo.com
(http://www.geocities.com/malbrain). It has the following license:

    This work, including the source code, documentation
    and related data, is placed into the public domain.

    The orginal author is Karl Malbrain.

    THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS-IS WITHOUT WARRANTY
    OF ANY KIND, NOT EVEN THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF
    MERCHANTABILITY. THE AUTHOR OF THIS SOFTWARE,
    ASSUMES _NO_ RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY CONSEQUENCE
    RESULTING FROM THE USE, MODIFICATION, OR
    REDISTRIBUTION OF THIS SOFTWARE.

The zlib library in '3rdparty/zlib' is (C) Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler. 
It has the following license:

    This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied
    warranty.  In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages
    arising from the use of this software.

    Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose,
    including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it
    freely, subject to the following restrictions:

    1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not
       claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software
       in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be
       appreciated but is not required.
    2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be
       misrepresented as being the original software.
    3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.

    Jean-loup Gailly        Mark Adler
    jloup@gzip.org          madler@alumni.caltech.edu

The mongoose http server in '3rdparty/mongoose' is (C) Sergey Lyubka and
Gilbert Wellisch.
It has the following license:

   Copyright (c) 2004-2009 Sergey Lyubka
   Portions Copyright (c) 2009 Gilbert Wellisch
  
   Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
   of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
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   furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
  
   The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
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   THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
   IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
   FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
   AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
   LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
   OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
   THE SOFTWARE.
  
The libcurl library is Copyright (c) 1996 - 2010, Daniel Stenberg, 
<daniel@haxx.se>. It has the following license:
    COPYRIGHT AND PERMISSION NOTICE

    Copyright (c) 1996 - 2010, Daniel Stenberg, <daniel@haxx.se>.

    All rights reserved.

    Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any 
    purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above 
    copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

    THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
    IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
    FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS.
    IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM,
    DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR
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    Except as contained in this notice, the name of a copyright holder shall not
    be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other 
    dealings in this Software without prior written authorization of the 
    copyright holder.

The Google Protocol Buffers ("protobuf") library is Copyright 2008, Google Inc.
It has the following license:

    Copyright 2008, Google Inc.
    All rights reserved.

    Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
    modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
    met:

        * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
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        * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
    copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer
    in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
    distribution.
        * Neither the name of Google Inc. nor the names of its
    contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from
    this software without specific prior written permission.

    THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
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