I can't usefully speak to your other questions, but the answers to the technical questions are below.
On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 1:16 PM, Michael Alan Dorman < mdor...@ironicdesign.com> wrote: > * 4.1.2. CREDENTIALS > > My quick clarification is from this bit of text: > > The body is a list of key/value informations. It is a [short] n, > followed by n pair of [string]. These key/value pairs [...] > > Is this just a string map, and the text just isn't using consistent > terminology? > It has the same structure as a string map, but might not necessarily *be* a string map. I would guess that this phrasing is used because it may be possible to have multiple identical "keys" in this structure, which would not make sense in a [string map]. (Although I don't think it's explicitly stated, it seems safe to imply that [string map] is intended to be a plain lookup table, not a set of arbitrary pairs.) * 4.2.5.2. Rows > > My more involved question is about this text describing the column > contents: > > - <rows_content> is composed of <row_1>...<row_m> where m is > <rows_count>. > Each <row_i> is composed of <value_1>...<value_n> where n is > <columns_count> and where <value_j> is a [bytes] representing the value > returned for the jth column of the ith row. In other words, > <rows_content> > is composed of (<rows_count> * <columns_count>) [bytes]. > > I read this and thought, "Oh, sure I'll need to figure out the width of > the java types for the different columns, tedious but easily doable", > and then noticed some of the options are things like Blob or Varchar, > both which I would assume to be variable width. So how should one > determine how many bytes to read for different types? > As the doc says, each <value_j> is a [bytes], which means it's represented on the wire as an [int] x followed by x bytes. p
