# SSTable

The `tantivy-sstable` crate is yet another sstable crate.

It has been designed to be used in `quickwit`:
- as an alternative to the default tantivy fst dictionary.
- as a way to store the column index for dynamic fast fields.

The benefit compared to the fst crate is locality.
Searching a key in the fst crate requires downloading the entire dictionary.

Once the sstable index is downloaded, running a `get` in the sstable
crate only requires a single fetch.

Right now, the block index and the default block size have been thought
for quickwit, and the performance of a get is very bad.

# Sorted strings?

SSTable stands for Sorted String Table.
Strings have to be insert in sorted order.

That sorted order is used in different ways:
- it makes gets and streaming ranges of keys
possible.
- it allows incremental encoding of the keys
- the front compression is leveraged to optimize
the intersection with an automaton

# On disk format

Overview of the SSTable format. Unless noted otherwise, numbers are little-endian.

### SSTable
```
+-------+-------+-----+--------+
| Block | Block | ... | Footer |
+-------+-------+-----+--------+
|----( # of blocks)---|
```
- Block(`SSTBlock`): list of independent block, terminated by a single empty block.
- Footer(`SSTFooter`)

### SSTBlock
```
+----------+----------+--------+-------+-------+-----+
| BlockLen | Compress | Values | Delta | Delta | ... |
+----------+----------+--------+-------+-------+-----+
                      |        |----( # of deltas)---|
                      |------(maybe compressed)------|
```
- BlockLen(u32): length of the block, including the compress byte.
- Compress(u8): indicate whether block is compressed. 0 if not compressed, 1 if compressed.
- Values: an application defined format storing a sequence of value, capable of determining it own length
- Delta

### Delta
```
+---------+--------+
| KeepAdd | Suffix |
+---------+--------+
```
- KeepAdd
- Suffix: KeepAdd.add bytes of key suffix

### KeepAdd
KeepAdd can be represented in two different representation, a very compact 1byte one which is enough for most usage, and a longer variable-len one when required

When keep < 16 and add < 16
```
+-----+------+
| Add | Keep |
+-----+------+
```
- Add(u4): number of bytes to push
- Keep(u4): number of bytes to pop

Otherwise:
```
+------+------+-----+
| 0x01 | Keep | Add |
+------+------+-----+
```
- Add(VInt): number of bytes to push
- Keep(VInt): number of bytes to pop


Note: as the SSTable does not support redundant keys, there is no ambiguity between both representation. Add is always guaranteed to be non-zero, except for the very first key of an SSTable, where Keep is guaranteed to be zero.

### SSTFooter
```
+-------+-------+-----+-------------+---------+---------+
| Block | Block | ... | IndexOffset | NumTerm | Version |
+-------+-------+-----+-------------+---------+---------+
|----( # of blocks)---|
```
- Block(SSTBlock): uses IndexValue for its Values format
- IndexOffset(u64): Offset to the start of the SSTFooter
- NumTerm(u64): number of terms in the sstable
- Version(u32): Currently equal to 2

### IndexValue
```
+------------+----------+-------+-------+-----+
| EntryCount | StartPos | Entry | Entry | ... |
+------------+----------+-------+-------+-----+
                        |---( # of entries)---|
```

- EntryCount(VInt): number of entries
- StartPos(VInt): the start pos of the first (data) block referenced by this (index) block
- Entry (IndexEntry)

### Entry
```
+----------+--------------+
| BlockLen | FirstOrdinal |
+----------+--------------+
```
- BlockLen(VInt): length of the block
- FirstOrdinal(VInt): ordinal of the first element in the given block