/ 
AmberDB-5.02
/ README.md

AmberDB

CPAN version Perl Version License CI Platform

AmberDB is a high-performance, embedded flat-file database engine for Perl built on top of Berkeley DB (DB_File). It provides zero-overhead schema management, 8-byte packed binary indexing, full-text search with phonetic and language normalization, multi-dimensional columnar facet indexing, multi-tier lifecycle archiving, ACID-like undo-journal transactions, granular concurrency locking, and a built-in multilingual locale engine.

Key Features

File System & Storage Architecture

AmberDB stores table data, indexes, and sidecars in a deterministic directory structure:

| File Extension | Role | Description | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | .db | Master Data Table | Berkeley DB hash file storing primary key-value records | | .inx | Primary Index | Ordered list of all record IDs + auto-increment last ID counter | | .src | Full-Text Index | Inverted word-to-binary-ID search index | | .fld | Block Match Index | Secondary field-to-ID lookup index | | .fac | Facet Index | Columnar facet index for fast multi-dimensional filtering | | .srt | Sorted Index | Pre-computed sorted ID buffers for fast index-level ordering | | .del | Soft Delete Log | Archive of deleted record IDs and deletion timestamps | | .lnk | Linked Table | Relational link mappings between records across tables | | .jnl | Undo Journal | Active transaction rollback journal file | | .aut | Audit Trail | Change logging and modification timestamps | | .cnt | View Counter | High-throughput concurrent counter store |

Installation

Via CPAN (Recommended)

cpanm AmberDB

Manual Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/marufcetin/amberdb.git
cd amberdb
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install

(On Windows with Strawberry Perl, use gmake or dmake)

Quick Start

1. Initialization

use strict;
use warnings;
use AmberDB;

# Initialize AmberDB instance
my $dbp = AmberDB->new(
    cfg  => { language => 'en' },
    path => { dbase_dir => './dbstore' }
);

2. CRUD Operations

# --- INSERT ---
# Record structure: (ID, Title, Category, Price, CreatedDate, Status)
# Pass ID = 0 to auto-generate a unique 64-bit ID
my $id = $dbp->insert_id("catalog_product", 0, "Wireless Headphones", "Electronics", 149.99, "2026-08-25", 1);
print "Created Product ID: $id\n";

# --- READ ---
my @product = $dbp->read_id("catalog_product", $id);
print "Product Title: $product[1]\n";

# --- UPDATE ---
$product[3] = 129.99; # Update Price
$dbp->modify_id("catalog_product", @product);

# --- DELETE ---
$dbp->delete_id("catalog_product", $id);

3. Querying & Pagination

# Read all records with offset, limit, and sorting
my ($total_count, @records) = $dbp->read_all(
    "catalog_product",
    start => 0,
    limit => 20,
    sort  => { blk => 3, reverse => 1 } # Sort descending by Price (field 3)
);

# High-efficiency pipeline returning only record IDs (keys_only)
my ($total, @ids) = $dbp->read_all("catalog_product", 0, 50, keys_only => 1);

4. Full-Text Search

# Search product catalog with language normalization and filtering
my ($total, @results) = $dbp->search_table(
    "catalog_product",
    "wireless headphone",
    start   => 0,
    limit   => 20,
);

5. Multi-Block Field Filtering

my $res = $dbp->field_filter("catalog_product", {
    type    => "and",
    filter  => {
        2 => "Electronics",
        5 => 1 # Active status
    },
    sort    => { blk => 3, reverse => 0 }, # Ascending price
    start   => 0,
    limit   => 10,
});

print "Found $res->{count} matching products.\n";

6. Transactions (ACID-like Undo-Journal)

# Start atomic multi-table transaction
$dbp->transact_start();

eval {
    # 1. Deduct balance
    my @account = $dbp->read_id("user_account", $user_id);
    $account[2] -= 100.00;
    $dbp->modify_id("user_account", @account);

    # 2. Create order
    my $order_id = $dbp->insert_id("order_master", 0, $user_id, 100.00, "COMPLETED");

    # 3. Commit transaction
    my $status = $dbp->transact_end();
    if ($status->{status} eq 'rollback') {
        die "Transaction rolled back automatically!";
    }
};
if ($@) {
    # Explicit manual rollback if an external exception occurred
    $dbp->transact_rollback();
    warn "Transaction failed: $@";
}

7. Multi-Level Locking

# Acquire table-level write lock
$dbp->flock_open("catalog_product", "write");

# ... perform exclusive batch operations ...

# Release table-level lock
$dbp->flock_close("catalog_product");

# Acquire record-level write lock
$dbp->flock_open("user_account", "write", $user_id);
# ... mutate user balance ...
$dbp->flock_close("user_account", $user_id);

Multilingual Locale Engine

AmberDB includes a built-in localization and text processing engine (AmberDB::Locale):

my $locale = AmberDB::Locale->new('tr');

# Correct Turkish case folding
print $locale->uc('ışık');        # "IŞIK"
print $locale->uc('istanbul');    # "İSTANBUL"
print $locale->lc('İZMİR');       # "izmir"

# Word normalization and phonetic devoicing
print $locale->normalize("Ahmet'in kitabı"); # "ahmet kitabi"

# Currency and number formatting
print $locale->format_currency(1250.50, 'TRY'); # "₺1.250,50"

Supported Languages: English (en), Turkish (tr), German (de), French (fr), Spanish (es), Japanese (ja), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Azerbaijani (az).

CLI Utilities

AmberDB ships with standalone command-line tools:

bin/convert_dbstore.pl

Converts and rebuilds all table indexes (.inx, .fld, .src, .srt) into packed 8-byte binary format:

perl bin/convert_dbstore.pl --dbstore ./dbstore --lang tr

bin/setup_ramdisk.pl

Mounts/unmounts ultra-fast RAM-disk caches for Linux (tmpfs) and Windows (ImDisk):

# Mount 512MB RAM-disk
sudo perl bin/setup_ramdisk.pl --start --size 512M

# Check status
perl bin/setup_ramdisk.pl --status

Documentation

Full comprehensive guides are available in the docs/ directory:

Running Tests

AmberDB contains an extensive test suite covering core operations, indexing, transactions, search, facets, concurrency, and locales:

# Run all tests via prove
prove -l t/

# Or via standard MakeMaker
perl Makefile.PL
make test

Contributing

Contributions, bug reports, and pull requests are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Author

Maruf Cetin
Email: marufcetin@gmail.com
GitHub: @marufcetin

Copyright (C) 2005-2026 Maruf Cetin.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the Artistic License 2.0. See LICENSE for details.