Paper Review: Architecture of a Database System

Saturday, October 1, 2022

Last week, I read "Architecture of a Database System" for a Red Book reading group.

This is as massive paper: 119 pages. What surprised me is how approachable it is. I have relatively little background building database systems and more experience using them. Despite this, the paper was readable and I was able to take away quite a bit from it, which I've already put into practice in my redis-compatible KV store that I'm building to learn about database systems.

The paper is structured in a way that makes it easy to skip around and focus on the parts that are most interesting or useful to you at the moment. It also gives a lot of pointers into other papers or texts to learn more or build a foundation.

I think this paper is an excellent introduction to database architecture for users of databases and for anyone who wants to learn more about the internals. It will give you a good, broad foundation which you can use to drive further exploration and improve your understanding of databases as you use them.


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