Guidelines for Using G2

The G2 data language was designed to provide an efficient but change-tolerant coupling between compiled programs. With care, a fair amount of inconsistency can be tolerated among a set of communicating processes. This should allow program developers to be more effective in a less than consistent environment.

When a record is passed between programs using G2 some useful interpretations take place:

1. Only non-empty fields and their attendant hierarchy are transmitted; non-transmitted fields are seen by the receiver as empty strings. This provides a form of data compression while relieving the transmitter of having to meet the expectations of the receiver(s).

2. Receivers discard unknown fields. This means that a transmitter may enrich a G2 record with out affecting its receivers. The receivers may upgrade to the enriched records as convenient.

3. Receivers truncate lengthy fields. This preserves the integrity of C data structures.

4. Transmitters send only printable (isprint(3)) data. Receivers accept only printable data. Strings are terminated by the first non-printable byte. Thus, the communications link is filtered at both ends.

With the above mechanisms in mind here are some serviceable guidelines for using G2 records.

1. Be generous in defining the maximum length of G2 fields. Since only non-empty strings are transmitted, the cost of defining larger G2 records is mainly in the size of the C data structure allocated within the program. These buffers are usually few in number, so one can afford to relax a bit about their size. It is better to have a larger G2 definition than needed than to ``creep'' the definition. For example, one should specify a numeric field at least 11 bytes long (long enough to represent, in ASCII, the biggest negative integer on a 32 bit machine).

2. Be miserly in defining G2 names; use the structuring facilities of G2 to create scopes where short names are distinctive. The root name of a G2 record becomes an external symbol so it should be kept to 6 characters. Also, since most UNIX output devices have tabs set every eight spaces, G2 records are easier to read raw when field names are less than 7 characters long.

3. Never change the meaning of a name; rather, invent a new one and gracefully retire the old one. This may mean supporting redundant data fields until other programs in a system have time to conform to new schemes.