Monday, 28 October 2013

introduction

sometimes the introduction is the hardest part .....

For years I worked as a programmer, in the last 20 years I worked mostly in the backend-area and with a variety of databases. And I always wanted to know how the database is doing all these things I gave to it in the form of data or instructions.

Now I take the chance to look into the code of MySQL/MariaDB and see how these things are handled by the DB-software, only following my curiosity.

This is not a complete overview of the source-code of these products, this is a very personal tour. If you like you are invited to follow me. Currently I do not know where I will end.

You will find a general overview of the MySQL and MariaDB-code here:
https://mariadb.com/kb/en/recommended-mariadb-mysql-books/
on the site look for this entry:


in these books you will find a more complete overview of the internals of these database-systems.


I will start my tour with a look into the storage engines, especially the code of some of these engines.

I will present some of my observations and play a bit with the code. I will also write my own code and present it here. My own code is not production ready, it's more of a proof of concept.

If you want to use my code you will need the source-code of MySQL or MariaDB and compile it for yourself. In a later post I will explain which version I used, where I found it and what I did to use it.