Tag: Databases

MVCC Internals: Snapshots, Visibility, and Vacuum

MVCC serves stable snapshots from versioned rows, then relies on visibility metadata and vacuum horizons to reclaim the history readers no longer need.

2026-06-28 · 12 min read

Write-Ahead Logging and Crash Recovery

Database write-ahead logs make commits durable before data pages settle, then guide checkpointed redo and undo after a crash.

2026-06-16 · 13 min read

Query Optimization: Reading an EXPLAIN Plan

Read PostgreSQL plans from estimates to execution, diagnose cardinality errors and spills, and make index or query fixes safely.

2026-06-08 · 12 min read

Cursor Pagination at Scale

Build cursor pagination from a stable total order, query-bound opaque tokens, matching indexes, and explicit change semantics.

2026-06-06 · 13 min read

Database Replication: Logs, Lag, and Failover

Database replication moves an ordered change stream, but acknowledgement, replay, routing, and fencing determine freshness and failover safety.

2026-06-04 · 14 min read

Table Partitioning Without Operational Surprises

Operate native table partitions as one logical database table through deliberate pruning, indexing, lifecycle automation, and reversible migration.

2026-05-11 · 14 min read

Zero-Downtime Database Migrations

Evolve a live database through expand, migrate, and contract phases with dual compatibility, resumable backfills, lock-aware DDL, and explicit rollback points.

2026-05-01 · 14 min read

Distributed SQL: Consensus Meets Query Processing

Understand how distributed SQL composes consensus-backed ranges, transactional timestamps, and locality-aware query plans into one relational database.

2026-04-29 · 14 min read

Columnar Storage and Vectorized Execution

Trace an OLAP query through column chunks, encodings, pruning, vectorized operators, and late materialization to understand where analytical speed comes from.

2026-04-17 · 15 min read

Time-Series Database Design

Design time-series storage around series identity, event time, append-heavy ingestion, bounded queries, late data, rollups, retention, and cardinality control.

2026-04-05 · 14 min read