> dynamically sized fields are packed into a contiguous area of memory
replyAre you able to explain this? Do you mean an N sized array where each entry is either a value or a pointer to a value where the 'pointed-to' values are after the end of the array?
I'm trying to underatnd how you'd do this without having to parse M-1 elements to get the Mth entry if you did a [{size0, value0}, ....., {sizeN, valueN}] arrangement
I think they mean the cache entry is a collection of dynamically sized fields. It would be nicer to store that as a single contiguous allocation, rather than a bunch of pointers to individually allocated dynamically sized items. At least in this case, it might.
replyIn a row oriented database, you get a contiguous spot for the whole row even when there are multiple variable width fields.