Feature: Don't clone values by default when retrieving values

[tobiemh]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

When fetching nested fields, array values, and remote records, we are currently cloning all values which are fetched. This has an impact on performance.

Describe the solution

Instead of using clone() by default when we are fetching or comparing fields , we should return Cow<'a, Value> values, resulting in a value only being cloned when it needs to be updated / written to.

We would also need to ensure that all Value types are based on Cow<'a, Value> values, as opposed to owned Value values.

So the following:

pub async fn get(&self, ctx: &Runtime, opt: &Options, txn: &Transaction, path: &[Part]) -> Result<Self, Error>;

would become:

pub async fn get(&'a self, ctx: &Runtime, opt: &Options, txn: &Transaction, path: &[Part]) -> Result<Cow<'a, Self>, Error>;

In addition, compute() functions would need to return Cow<'a, Value> values.

pub(crate) async fn compute(&'a self, ctx: &Context<'_>, opt: &Options, txn: &Transaction, doc: Option<&Value>) -> Result<Cow<'a, Value>, Error>

Alternative methods

Currently the functionality works without modification, but query performance will be significantly improved when this change is made.

SurrealDB version

surreal 1.0.0-beta.5 for macos on aarch64

Contact Details

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