Data Structures

Record Events
SPLASH directly creates record events, which are records with an associated operation like insert. This documentation uses the term record interchangeably with record event.
XML Values
An XML value is a value composed of XML elements and attributes, where elements can contain other XML elements or text. XML values can be created directly or built by parsing string values. XML values cannot be stored in records, but can be converted to string representation and stored in that form.
Vectors
A vector is a sequence of values, all of which must have the same type, with an ability to access elements of the sequence by an integer index. A vector has a size, from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 2 billion entries.
Dictionaries
Dictionaries are data structures that associate keys with values. They are called maps in C++ and Java, arrays in AWK, and association lists in LISP, so they are common data structures.
Streams
There are ways to access the records in input streams, using means similar to dictionaries, although one cannot change the records in an input stream.
Stream Iterators
Stream iterators are a means of explicitly iterating over all of the records stored in a stream. It is usually more convenient, and safer, to use the for loop mechanism, but stream iterators provide extra flexibility.
Event Caches
Event caches hold a number of previous events for the input stream or streams to a derived stream. They are organized into buckets, based on values of the fields in the records and are often used when vectors or dictionaries are not quite the right data structure.