Operations
Operations are the smallest atomic unit of RON protocol. Everything else is made of ops, including logs, object state, patches, chains, chunks, frames etc.
Closed notation
In its fullest form, operation is four UUIDs and zero or more atoms in payload:
In RON Each UUID is marked with prefix denoting its type:
*starts a reducer id (a name variety UUID from a pre-defined list),#starts an object id this operation is applied to,@starts an operation id, unique for every created operation,:starts a reference operation id. Swarm uses it to track causality relationships. Usually it’ll be a last operation replica has seen on particular object.
Payload is a space-separated list of zero or more atoms. Payloads are reducer-specific. Different reducers will expect different atoms in different order.
The example above corresponds roughly to the following JSON:
{ reducer_id: "lww",
object_id: "D4ICD0+XU5eRJ",
operation_id: "D4ICD0+XU5eRJ",
reference_id: "D4ICCF+XU5eRJ",
payload: ["xyz", 1099, 3.14, "A/UUID+0"] }
Open notation
Open notation is just a shorted version of closed one. Reducer id and object id are omitted in this case, as those could be deduced from full DB and reference id:
Op patterns
An UUID may be one of four versions: event, derived, name and hash. Consequently, an op may have one of 16 patterns, depending on the versions of its id and reference. RON defines following combinations:
| Id ver | Ref ver | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
+ | + | A regular op, like a letter typed in a text or a field in a key-value object. |
- | + | Deletion, reverts the referenced op. |
- | - | Undeletion, reverts earlier deletion(s) of the referenced op. |
+ | $ | Creation, creates an object, serves as its causal root op. |
+ | - | Acknowledgement (an ack), not part of the referenced causal tree, used for versioning. |
$ | + | Annotation, not part of the data model, e.g. a comment or an error message or some derived calculation (like a cryptographic hash of an op). |
$ | - | Same as $ +. |
For example:
@~ 'this is a projection, namely a sha3-512 Merkle hash of the op'
@sha3 :D4ICD-XU5eRJ '2b158f60983baaa9041e9edf85cd727070f0ff030fc7c1b433aafdd83f4e30ea'
