The tags tables were initially added to speed up the loading of the browser by
speeding up two operations: gathering a list of all tags to show in the
dropdown box, and finding cards with a given tag. The former functionality is
provided by the tags table, and the latter functionality by the cardTags
table.
Selective study is handled by groups now, which perform better since they
don't require a join or subselect, and can be embedded in the index. So the
only remaining benefit of cardTags is for the browser.
Performance testing indicates that cardTags is not saving us a large amount.
It only takes us 30ms to search a 50k card table for matches with a hot cache.
On a cold cache it means the facts table has to be loaded into memory, which
roughly doubles the load time with the default settings (we need to load the
cards table too, as we're sorting the cards), but that startup time was
necessary with certain settings in the past too (sorting by fact created for
example). With groups implemented, the cost of maintaining a cache just for
initial browser load time is hard to justify.
Other changes:
- the tags table has any missing tags added to it when facts are added/edited.
This means old tags will stick around even when no cards reference them, but
is much cheaper than reference counting or a separate table, and simplifies
updates and syncing.
- the tags table has a modified field now so we can can sync it instead of
having to scan all facts coming across in a sync
- priority field removed
- we no longer put model names or card templates into the tags table. There
were two reasons we did this in the past: so we could cram/selective study
them, and for plugins. Selective study uses groups now, and plugins can
check the model's name instead (and most already do). This also does away
with the somewhat confusing behaviour of names also being tags.
- facts have their tags as _tags now. You can get a list with tags(), but
editing operations should use add/deleteTags() instead of manually editing
the string.
- limits are stored separately so we can access them quickly when checking
deck counts
- data is used to store cssCache and hexCache; these may be refactored or go
away in the future
- model config is now stored as a json-serialized dict, which allows us to
quickly gather the info and allows for adding extra options more easily in
the future
- denormalize modelId into the cards table, so we can get the model scheduling
information without having to hit the facts table
- remove position - since we will handle spacing differently we don't need a
separate variable to due to define sort order
- remove lastInterval from cards; the new cram mode and review early shouldn't
need it
- successive->streak
- add new columns for learn mode
- move cram mode into new file; learn more and review early need more thought
- initial work on learn mode
- initial unit tests
- move most scheduling parameters from deck to models
- remove obsolete fields in deck and models
- decks->deck
- remove deck id reference in models
- move some deckVars into the deck table
- simplify deckstorage
- lock sessionhelper by default
- add models/currentModel as properties instead of ORM mappings
- remove models.tags
- remove remaining support for memory-backed databases
- use a blank string for syncName instead of null
- remove backup code; will handle in gui
- bump version to 100
- update unit tests
Previously we had an index on the value field, which was very expensive for
long fields. Instead we use a separate column and take the first 8 characters
of the field value's md5sum, and index that. In decks with lots of text in
fields, it can cut the deck size by 30% or more, and many decks improve by
10-20%. Decks with only a few characters in fields may increase in size
slightly, but this is offset by the fact that we only generate a checksum for
fields that have uniqueness checking on.
Also, fixed import->update reporting the total # of available facts instead of
the number of facts that were imported.
When you call operations like deleteCards(), suspendCards() and so on, it is
now necessary to call deck.reset() afterwards. This allows the calling code to
delay a reset if necessary. If the calling code calls a function that says the
caller must reset, the caller should be sure to call .reset() and fetch the
current card again. Failure to do the latter will result in answerCard()
attempting to remove the card from the queue, when the queue has been cleared.
Attaching new to old causes old to be implicitly commited.
We also can't access old from new if a write lock has been
taken out, so the only option left is to move all the data
through Python and take the speed hit.