[DAS2] feature group assembly; proposals for simplification

[Andrew Dalke]

Lincoln:
> My GFF3 parser works in a similar manner. As each feature comes in, it 
> is
> parsed, turned into an object, and sent to a disk-based database.

I was writing a GFF3 to DAS2XML converter.  With bi-di links each
record needs link data for both directions before writing the record.
I could do intermediate saves to the disk, but that's more work
than I wanted to do.

I can change my converter to use less memory - quite a bit less
with a bit more work.  I've not optimized much for memory, mostly
for speed.

Another solution is to get rid of bi-di links and have only parent
links.  In that case the conversion is trivial, excepting the
steps to check for cycles and single-rooted groups.

But that's only if people don't sufficiently want the ability to
process complete features while other features are being up/downloaded.

					Andrew
					dalke at dalkescientific.com