Database Internals - Where to Begin?

Question

So lets say that you want to learn some stuff about database internals. What's the best source code to look at? the best books to buy?I was talking about this with a buddy the other day and he recommended: [Art of Computer Programming, Volume 3: Sorting and Searching](http://www.amazon.com/Art-Computer-Programming-Sorting-Searching/dp/0201896850/)What other books would help me learn about all the File IO and memory issues, pages, locking, etc.... ?

Answer 1

I would recommend texts on data structures, file processing, and algorithms.

Basically, the way a database works in the actual data in kept in a binary file

while the metadata and schema is stored in a related file.

When the table is opened, the meta data is read first: # of records, size of each

record, # of column fields, and the type of each column.

One a record is read, it can be transformed from its raw binary data into

its corresponding data structure via the schema layout of the meta data.

This can be done in C/C++ via function pointers or in Java via interfaces.

the low level operations that need to be interfaced in this manner are

the conversion from the data structure to and from pure binary,

the conversion from the data structure to and from text,

comparing two records for sorting,

etc