Re: [boost] [serialization] fast array serialization (10x speedup)

From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-11-24 18:08:19

Ian McCulloch wrote:

> Besides, is the boost iostreams library really much slower than a
> hand-coded buffer?

I'm pretty confident that its much, much slower, but this will remain
in dispute until someone runs the code with a profiler.

> Anyway, this is a side issue.  The main point is:
>
> David Abrahams wrote:
>>   ,----
>>   | For many archive formats and common datatypes there exist APIs
>>   | that can quickly read or write contiguous sequences of those
>>   types | all at once (**).  Reading or writing such a sequence by
>>   | separately reading or writing each element (as the serialization
>>   | library currently does) can be an order of magnitude more
>>   | expensive.
>>   `----

Sorry - that's NOT the main point.

The main point is - do enhancement for special cases have to be
incorporated into the the core code so that everybody else
is obligated to use it?  What are the advantages and
disadvantages of doing so?

No one is disputing that it desireable to be able to extend
the library for these special circumstances.

> If there is to be any possibility of targetting an archive to this
> format, then array support is crucial.

Then just make an archive which does it- what's stopping you?

Robert Ramey