Let's Build a Simple Database
Writing a sqlite clone from scratch in C
How Does a Database Work?
- What format is data saved in? (in memory and on disk)
- When does it move from memory to disk?
- Why can there only be one primary key per table?
- How does rolling back a transaction work?
- How are indexes formatted?
- When and how does a full table scan happen?
- What format is a prepared statement saved in?
In short, how does a database work?
I’m building a clone of sqlite from scratch in C in order to understand, and I’m going to document my process as I go.
Table of Contents
- Part 1 - Introduction and Setting up the REPL
- Part 2 - World’s Simplest SQL Compiler and Virtual Machine
- Part 3 - An In-Memory, Append-Only, Single-Table Database
- Part 4 - Our First Tests (and Bugs)
- Part 5 - Persistence to Disk
- Part 6 - The Cursor Abstraction
- Part 7 - Introduction to the B-Tree
- Part 8 - B-Tree Leaf Node Format
- Part 9 - Binary Search and Duplicate Keys
- Part 10 - Splitting a Leaf Node
- Part 11 - Recursively Searching the B-Tree
- Part 12 - Scanning a Multi-Level B-Tree
- Part 13 - Updating Parent Node After a Split
“What I cannot create, I do not understand.” – Richard Feynman
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