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@cpjulia cpjulia commented Nov 25, 2025

Scope & Purpose

In AqlValue.cpp, there's a hashing function and a comparator. An AqlValue object can have different types of values, inline, slice pointers, managed slices and managed strings (and, in the future, supervised slice). Inline values are non-allocated values that are distributed within the AqlValue's 16 bytes of available space, slice pointers are pointers to values not owned by the AqlValue object, and managed slices and strings are dynamically allocated payloads owned by the AqlValue object. Even if multiple aql values point to the same managed slice, still, it's owned by AqlValue, and the last AqlValue that points to it to be destroy has to free this allocated memory. The hashing and comparator are used in AqlItemBlock for deduplication, when inserting the AqlValue on a block, so it has to compare if two aql values are equal.

Now onto the hashing, before, the hash was made with the pointers, not the data pointed to by the pointers. The data that the pointer stores is the address of the payload it points to, hence, if two aql values that own memory were compared using this approach, they would never be considered equal, and they could be, because, even though having memory allocated in different addresses, the payload that each store could be semantically the same. This would lead to the comparison used in AqlItemBlock not working properly, and wrongfully distinguishing values that should be considered the same in practice.
The new approach is to hash by the value stored in the address in cases where there's dynamic allocation.
When the value is inline, it's safe to maintain the original approach.
When the value is of type slice pointer, it means AqlValue doesn't own it, hence, the pointers should be hashed. If they point to the same address, then they could be considered the same.

  • 💩 Bugfix
  • 🍕 New feature
  • 🔥 Performance improvement
  • 🔨 Refactoring/simplification

Checklist

  • Tests -> PROBABLY TO BE ADDED
    • Regression tests
    • C++ Unit tests
    • integration tests
    • resilience tests
  • 📖 CHANGELOG entry made
  • 📚 documentation written (release notes, API changes, ...)
  • Backports
    • Backport for 3.12.0: (Please link PR)
    • Backport for 3.11: (Please link PR)
    • Backport for 3.10: (Please link PR)

Related Information

(Please reference tickets / specification / other PRs etc)

  • Docs PR:
  • Enterprise PR:
  • GitHub issue / Jira ticket:
  • Design document:

Note

Switches AqlValue hash/equality to normalized content-based semantics (incl. ranges) and updates AqlItemBlock cloning/serialization accordingly, adding comprehensive tests.

  • AQL Core:
    • AqlValue:
      • Implement normalized, content-based hash() (incl. RANGE), add kDefaultSeed, and remap zero hash.
      • Rework std::hash<AqlValue> and std::equal_to<AqlValue> to use VelocyPack normalized comparison across storage types; compare inlines by value; RANGE by bounds.
      • Minor safety asserts and RANGE compare cleanup.
  • AqlItemBlock:
    • toVelocyPack(...): uses FlatHashMap<AqlValue, size_t> with value-based keys; minor cleanup.
    • cloneDataAndMoveShadow(...): simplify shadow-row handling to set values and transfer ownership; cache by pointer only for cloning optimization.
  • Tests:
    • Add AqlValueHashAlgorithmCorrectnessTest, AqlValueHashEqualTest, and AqlValueHashTest validating content-based hashing/equality and block (de)serialization behavior.
    • Register new tests in tests/CMakeLists.txt.

Written by Cursor Bugbot for commit d2def76. This will update automatically on new commits. Configure here.

@cla-bot cla-bot bot added the cla-signed label Nov 25, 2025
@cpjulia cpjulia added this to the devel milestone Nov 25, 2025
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I have some clarifying questions

return std::hash<void const*>()(x._data.rangeMeta.range);
using T = AqlValue::AqlValueType;
auto aqlValueType = x.type();
// as this is non owning, we hash by the pointer
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What does the owning make for a difference?

Hashing is a quick look of the content is equal.
In my opinion it should not take into account if the value is owned or not.

Comment on lines 1383 to 1386
if (h == 0) { // fallback to avoid collision with the marker that uses h ==
// 0, very unlikely to happen
h = 1;
}
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Hö what is this?

Comment on lines 1407 to 1408
return a._data.slicePointerMeta.pointer ==
b._data.slicePointerMeta.pointer;
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Why is this pointer comparison?
And not real equality comparison like the default case?

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cache.emplace(a.data());
res->setValue(row, col, a);
// Transfer ownership to res - guard won't destroy it
guard.steal();
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Bug: Shadow row deduplication removed while cache remains populated

The shadow row handling now calls cache.emplace(a.data()) but ignores the return value and always transfers ownership via guard.steal(). The old code used the emplace result to deduplicate: when a pointer was already cached, it would destroy the duplicate value and reuse the cached one. The new code removes this deduplication but still populates the cache, suggesting incomplete refactoring. If multiple shadow row cells share the same underlying data pointer, this could lead to multiple AqlValue objects referencing the same memory, potentially causing memory management issues.

Fix in Cursor Fix in Web

case T::VPACK_INLINE_DOUBLE:
// long numbers are stored in the same form, so we can compare raw bits
return a._data.longNumberMeta.data.intLittleEndian.val ==
b._data.longNumberMeta.data.intLittleEndian.val;
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Bug: Inline double equality uses raw bits incorrectly

The equal_to<AqlValue> comparison for VPACK_INLINE_INT64, VPACK_INLINE_UINT64, and VPACK_INLINE_DOUBLE uses raw bit comparison (intLittleEndian.val == intLittleEndian.val). This is problematic for doubles because -0.0 and +0.0 have different bit patterns but are semantically equal in IEEE 754 (-0.0 == +0.0 is true). The hash function uses normalizedHash() which likely normalizes these values to the same hash. This could violate the hash/equality contract: two values might hash to the same bucket but compare unequal, causing incorrect behavior in hash maps/sets used for deduplication.

Fix in Cursor Fix in Web

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3 participants