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A linear-time scheme for version reconstruction

Published: 01 May 1994 Publication History

Abstract

An efficient scheme to store and reconstruct versions of sequential files is presented. The reconstruction scheme involves building a data structure representing a complete version, and then successively modifying this data structure by applying a sequence of specially formatted differential files to it. Each application of a differential file produces a representation of an intermediate version, with the final data structure representing the requested version.
The scheme uses a linked list to represent an intermediate version, instead of a sequential array, as is used traditionally. A new format for differential files specifying changes to this linked list data structure is presented. The specification of each change points directly to where the change is to take place, thereby obviating a search. Algorithms are presented for using such a new format differential file to transform the representation of a version, and for reconstructing a requested version. Algorithms are also presented for generating the new format differential files, both for the case of a forward differential specifying how to transform the representation of an old version to the representation of a new version, and for the case of a reverse differential specifying how to transform the representation of a new version to the representation of an old version.
The new version reconstruction scheme takes time linear in the sum of the size of the initial complete version and the sizes of the file differences involved in reconstructing the requested version. In contrast, the classical scheme for reconstructing versions takes time proportional to the sum of the sizes of the sequence of versions involved in the reconstruction, and therefore has a worst-case time that is quadratic in the sum of the size of the initial complete version and the sizes of the file differences. The time cost of the new differential file generation scheme is comparable to the time cost of the classical differential file generation scheme.

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Cited By

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  • (2005)Intelligent Storage for Information RetrievalProceedings of the International Conference on Next Generation Web Services Practices10.1109/NWESP.2005.50Online publication date: 22-Aug-2005
  • (1997)Efficient distributed backup with delta compressionProceedings of the fifth workshop on I/O in parallel and distributed systems10.1145/266220.266223(27-36)Online publication date: 17-Nov-1997

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Elizabeth Ann Buschlen Unger

Version control in data systems containing sequential files of objects is the subject of this paper. The authors present algorithms for reconstructing the versions of a file using a complete version and successively modifying this data structure by applying a sequence of differential files called version control s ystem files. Efficient version control is important in software development, temporal databases, computer-aided design, and document production systems. The presented method for reconstruction of a version has time complexity that is linear in terms of the size of the complete version and the total size of the differences between the sequence of versions directly required for the reconstruction. This size is a significant improvement over such systems as the RCS version control system and is comparable to most differential file generation schemes.

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems
ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems  Volume 16, Issue 3
May 1994
773 pages
ISSN:0164-0925
EISSN:1558-4593
DOI:10.1145/177492
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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 May 1994
Published in TOPLAS Volume 16, Issue 3

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Author Tags

  1. data structures
  2. database systems
  3. differential files
  4. document preparation
  5. software systems
  6. textual objects
  7. version control

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Cited By

View all
  • (2005)Intelligent Storage for Information RetrievalProceedings of the International Conference on Next Generation Web Services Practices10.1109/NWESP.2005.50Online publication date: 22-Aug-2005
  • (1997)Efficient distributed backup with delta compressionProceedings of the fifth workshop on I/O in parallel and distributed systems10.1145/266220.266223(27-36)Online publication date: 17-Nov-1997

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