Published STX B+ Tree C++ Template Classes Version 0.7

Released the first version 0.7 of the STX B+ Tree C++ Template Classes package. The template classes are licensed under the LGPL.

The STX B+ Tree package is a set of C++ template classes implementing a B+ tree key/data container in main memory. The classes are designed as drop-in replacements of the STL containers set, map, multiset and multimap and follow their interfaces very closely. By packing multiple value pairs into each node of the tree the B+ tree reduces heap fragmentation and utilizes cache-line effects better than the standard red-black binary tree. The tree algorithms are based on the implementation in Cormen, Leiserson and Rivest's Introduction into Algorithms, Jan Jannink's paper and other algorithm resources. The classes contain extensive assertion and verification mechanisms to ensure the implementation's correctness by testing the tree invariants.

The main B+ tree implementation can be found in doxygen stx/btree.h or with plain text comments stx/btree.h.

The source code package is available for download from this webpage.

The classes are documented extensively using doxygen. The generated HTML documentation can be browsed online or downloaded.

Special interest was put into performing a speed comparison test between the standard red-black tree and the new B+ tree implementation. The speed test results are interesting and show the B+ tree to be significantly faster for trees containing more than 16,000 items.