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Database Internals: A Deep Dive into How Distributed Data Systems Work

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Format: Paperback


Description

When it comes to choosing, using, and maintaining a database, understanding its internals is essential. But with so many distributed databases and tools available today, it’s often difficult to understand what each one offers and how they differ. With this practical guide, Alex Petrov guides developers through the concepts behind modern database and storage engine internals.Throughout the book, you’ll explore relevant material gleaned from numerous books, papers, blog posts, and the source code of several open source databases. These resources are listed at the end of parts one and two. You’ll discover that the most significant distinctions among many modern databases reside in subsystems that determine how storage is organized and how data is distributed.This book examines:Storage engines: Explore storage classification and taxonomy, and dive into B-Tree-based and immutable Log Structured storage engines, with differences and use-cases for eachStorage building blocks: Learn how database files are organized to build efficient storage, using auxiliary data structures such as Page Cache, Buffer Pool and Write-Ahead LogDistributed systems: Learn step-by-step how nodes and processes connect and build complex communication patternsDatabase clusters: Which consistency models are commonly used by modern databases and how distributed storage systems achieve consistency Read more


Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (November 5, 2019)


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Paperback ‏ : ‎ 370 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1492040347


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 47


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 0.75 x 9 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #72,677 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #4 in Desktop Database Books #7 in Management Information Systems #24 in Data Mining (Books)


#4 in Desktop Database Books:


#7 in Management Information Systems:


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Top Amazon Reviews


  • Not great: superficial and poorly written
I do not recommend this book. It covers a lot of topics, but only briefly (like it was written in a race to cover all the words in a big list of key technical terms). The writing is often poor and completely opaque: there are sentences I've read over and over again and still cannot figure out what the author is trying to say. More and more I find myself just looking at the title of a section and then looking up that concept on wikipedia for a much better treatment of the topic. I think that's the main value of this book: look a the table of contents and just look at wikipedia for each section and save yourself the cost of the book. I find it hard to believe that the people who gave this 5 stars actually read the entire book. The first half is a superficial review of database concepts (mostly just B-trees which are the focus of chapters 2, 4, and 6; and then LSM trees in chapter 7). Read the wikipedia article on B-trees and the original LSM Tree paper (free online) to get a better treatment. The second half (distributed systems) is particularly bad, so if you're more interested in that, frankly just google "Patterns of Distributed Systems" on Martin Fowler's page. It's free and much better. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2022 by Eric

  • Summarized Recent Overview of Storage & Distributed Systems
Mastery in systems abstraction comes through a philosophical pivot. While an enthusiastic beginner considers successful "use cases", an experienced traveler - through her implicit awareness of futility against entropy - often only considers failure and just tries her best. As more systems, and more of every system, are being dictated by the twin forces of economics and architectural modernism, a much higher percentage of design and development efforts in software should be dedicated to understanding fundamentals (CPU registers, branch prediction etc.) and essential complexities (multi-node consensus, replication failures etc.). This book is a good start. Database Internals is divided into two parts - the first deals with database storage. Especially good sections put a 9-cell flash-light on how many recent architectures are indeed built to tackle complexity bottom-up. i.e., LSM (log-structured merge) trees nicely complement the "write amplification" of Solid-State Disks. The discussion on the canonical B-tree and its multiple siblings (especially Bw-tree) is very well done. The functional difference between locks and latches would be enlightening even for experienced database practitioners - locks are used to manage transactions, latches to guard the *physical* storage representation. The second half of the book focusing on distributed systems is more uneven in quality. It is, however, a great start of economized discussion of about 50 "Best Papers" on Leader Election, Failure/Crash detection, Replication and how distributed systems friendly "consensus protocols", rather than atomic ones like 2-phase commit work better. In many ways, distributed systems have veered from monarchy (single, immutable leader deciding everything, including the next leader) to a true republic (leader is still almost omnipotent, but is regularly replaced by the constituents). The comparative analysis of Paxos, ZAB and Raft - with clear sequence diagrams - is very well done. The quality of writing is good, though could have been helped with more ruthless editing. The area covered is simply too broad, other than the intersect of SSDs and Modern DB architecture which is very deep and very good. Still the book easily deserves at least 4-stars for the enthusiasm and for its good attempt to convey distributed systems pedagogy to general practitioners. Pair it with Martin Kleppmann's "Designing Data Intensive Applications" and Ken Birman's "Guide to Reliable Distributed Systems". ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2019 by Nilendu Misra Nilendu Misra

  • Packed with details, great read
Can't believe I forgot to write a review for this one! Partly it's probably because I usually have less to say (or more precisely it's harder for me to be properly articulate) about things I like than I do about the ones I don't. And boy did I like Database Internals! I'll try my best to explain why, the book and the author surely deserve it. Being a back-end engineer, the main reason for picking this one up was to better understand the distributed databases that I may end up in (or have already had) contact with. With that in mind, I planned on just skimming the first part of the book but imagine my surprise when I found myself Googling BW and LSM trees and going through papers comparing this and that algorithm and their impacts on memory, storage and CPU caches in multicore systems. The geek got suckered in! With my curiosity circuits pleasantly warmed by the first part, I moved on to the second part of the book - the main dish - where a similar scenario unfolded: again I swallowed up whatever was served and ended up digging for more and adding scores of books and papers to my to-read list. All in all, Database Internals reads felt a lot like a trip to the zoo or a local museum: chock full of data structures and algorithms used by modern-day databases (and distributed systems in general), the book will showcase each item with sufficient details for you to grasp what they're about and then provide you with enough bibliography and reference material to last you a lifetime... or at least a couple of years. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2020 by FingolfinTEK

  • I've been looking for this book for years
I've been looking for a book that covers these topics for a long time. Even just working with different databases on a day-to-day basis it's incredibly helpful to understand how components of each database actually work. Furthermore the topics covered in this book span a very wide array of different topics and techniques which are incredibly handy for distributed systems. It's really hard to find this much information in a single book. Usuaully you'd have to know each of the topics you're interested in and buy an entire book on that topic. This book packs a pretty in depth view on several topics related to database systems into one book without needless fluff. I highly recommend this book not only to people working on distributed data systems, but to anyone working with databases. This is one of my most frequently referenced books I own. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2021 by travis

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