writeonce/database/src/CODE-LOGIC.md

database/src — how the engine hangs together

The database engine is its own top-level directory, statically linked into every wovm and every runtime test binary (runtime/Makefile's DBSRC). One binary, unchanged. Format doc: docs/plan/oop-vm/04-db-binding.md. Memory-safety doctrine: the 9b design's section 6.

table.c — rows (iteration 9, Task 1)

VM values ──copy──▶ row slots (engine-owned malloc) ──copy──▶ fresh VM values
        wo_row_insert                              wo_row_read

• No VM pointer ever enters a slab; no slab pointer ever leaves. Encode copies per kind (Texts to db_text, owned objects flattened recursively to db_rec, containers element-wise); decode allocates fresh VM values from the caller's wo_rt. The GCREF kind is refused at encode — the compiler should have made that impossible (the GC bulkhead), the engine refuses it anyway.
• Rows never move. Slabs of 256 are malloc'd and kept for the table's life; the free-slot list recycles removed slots before any slab grows; the id hash maps id → slot. Ids are never reused (per-table counter, shard-interleaved S+1, S+1+N, …), which is also what makes the hash's tombstone sentinel safe.
• Choke points: wo_row_insert / wo_row_remove carry the INDEX HOOK comments where Task 4's secondary indexes attach and Task 2's WAL stages its record. Nothing else may mutate storage.
• One deliberate file-static: g_classes for recursive frees (db_val_free has no context parameter). One process, one class table; revisit at iteration 8 (shards share the same immutable table).

wal.c — durability (iteration 9, Task 2)

The commit order IS the module: RAM apply → stage → one pwrite + one fdatasync → ack. wo_wal_commit returning 0 is the only thing "durable" means. Replay never touches the VM heap — payloads decode straight into engine-owned values and re-enter through the row API, so whatever hooks the choke points (indexes, Task 4) applies to replayed rows identically. Torn tails end the intact prefix and get overwritten by the next commit; CRC-valid-but-undecodable records fail replay loudly (corruption is not a tear). The crash battery in runtime/test/test_wal.c is the module's meaning proven: acked-over-a-pipe after commit, SIGKILL mid-stream, replay, zero acked-but-missing.

db.c — statement executors (iteration 9, Task 3)

One dispatcher, the builtin contract (0 ok, else WO_T_* + msg). The engine handles ride wo_rt.db / wo_rt.wal as opaque pointers set by main.c — NULL db traps WO_T_DB, NULL wal means RAM-only (the corpus's mode; WO_DATA opts into durability). Insert's contract: RAM apply through the row API, then stage + commit BEFORE returning — the builtin's return is the acknowledgment, so a failed commit un-applies the row and traps WO_T_IO rather than acknowledging what disk never got.

Verifying a change

• make -C runtime test — test_table is this directory's suite (round trips across kinds, nil encodings, shard interleave, slab growth, slot reuse, misuse), ASan+UBSan like every runtime test.
• just oop-e2e, just log-watcher — regression that linking the engine into wovm changed nothing observable (it is dead code until Task 3 wires the first builtin).

The slot-level surface (arc stage 3, 2026-08-21)

• Why it exists: the transparent DB actor executes a worker's statement on the owner shard, and VM heaps are never read cross-shard — so the requester encodes to engine slots on its own thread and the owner executes from slots, exactly the shape WAL replay already used.
• wo_db_val_encode exposes the in-gate for the RPC marshaler; wo_db_val_clone deep-copies an engine value (a get-field reply must outlive the row: a later serialized statement may free the slot); wo_row_insert_slots / wo_row_update_field_slot are the pre-encoded twins of insert/update (slot values consumed either way — installed on success, freed on failure); wo_db_exec_req (db.c) mirrors wo_builtin_db case for case with slot inputs and plain outputs, so a worker sees byte-identical traps and messages.
• The update refactor extracted row_apply_field_slot (the post-encode half: unique shadow-check, index fix-up, slot swap) shared by both entry points — the VM-value path's behavior is unchanged bit for bit.