Brian "Krow" Aker's Idle Thoughts - Engine Discovery

(I am writing this as a note to myself, more then as a note to
others...)

The MySQL Engine API supports a concept of "discovery". Discovery
allows an engine to say "yes this table exists, and here is the
definition".

To implement this, you need to create the following function in your
engine:

int archive_discover(handlerton *hton, THD* thd, const char *db,
const char *name,
const void** frmblob,
uint* frmlen);

This is a function for the handlerton, and is not a method of the
handler class.

Table discovery flow of execution is simple. Whenever a table is
opened, MySQL looks for a corresponding table or view definition. If
neither exists then the discovery functions are called for each of
the engines that have registered a discovery function. In the
discovery an engine can return either 1 if the table is not found, or
zero if it is found.

The engine must return the binary form of the table (aka the FRM).
The server will take responsibility for the memory associated with
the frm. The limitation to this is that you must have an FRM in the
first place.