itaps-parallel Proposal for handling queries with parts, sets, and partitions

[Jason Kraftcheck]

Onkar Sahni wrote:
> 
> 
> I may also fall into category of (for iMesh, serial) -- new enough to not
> be "trapped in the culture" -- so I will go ahead and ask some
> "non-sensical / counter-intuitive" questions (at least to me at this point
> of time). If mesh-instance and root-set-handle is one-to-one then
> specifying both seems redundant. Actually why we need both mesh-instance
> and entity-set-handle in functions like getNumOfType() and getNumOfTopo(),
> may be if entity-sets span  more than one mesh instance... can they?
> 

No, but a single mesh-instance may have many entity sets.  Further, the
root set is /defined/ to mean the mesh instance.  It is a special value
(possibly a constant) that is used to indicate that a query is to be
done over the entire mesh instance, as opposed to some subset of the
mesh instance indicated by some other entity set handle.  We could
eliminate the need for a root set at the cost of having twice as many
functions in the interface.

- jason