[ZODB-Dev] zodb cache settings

[Miles Waller]

Hi,

I'm hoping someone can answer a simple question about the zodb cache 
settings that are shown in the control panel of the ZMI under zope.  In 
summary, I'm trying to understand a bit more about how zodb loads 
objects into memory, so I can make sure that objects I need aren't being 
evicted from the cache unnecessarily.

In my database, I have a zope folder (it's not a btree folder) so items 
in the folder are stored as attributes, and the ids of the items as a 
list.  In the folder I have 10 subfolders.  Each subfolder contains one 
simple object, again, stored as an attribute.

The folder, the subfolders and the objects all have an attributes which 
is a DateTime object.  They also all have a single string attribute 
which is the title.

Now, if I access say, the title attribute of the top folder, the entire 
folder object is loaded into memory.  Am I correct that the subfolder 
objects (attributes of the folder) are not loaded in at this point, just 
references to them?  Does the same apply to the DateTime objects which 
are attributes of this folder?

At this point, how many objects would the cache show as needed to be loaded?

Assuming that I access the datetime attribute when I load the folder, 
could I avoid evicting objects from the cache by storing dates as 
strings rather than DateTimes, so I load one large object rather than two?

Also, am I right that the cache size is determined by total number of 
objects, rather than by cache size?  So loading a large file in, for 
example, would not evict tons of objects to make room for it.

Thanks in advance for any help,

Miles