Completed ✅
- WAL for durability
- MemTable for fast writes
- SSTable writer & reader
- Binary encoding
- Error handling patterns
- Block caching
Development Roadmap
Current Status: Day 4 of development with 11,306 lines of Rust code, 217 passing tests, and 10 blog posts.
Our Building Journey
Section titled “Our Building Journey” IMPLEMENTED
Storage Components
Section titled “Storage Components”- Write-Ahead Log - Binary format with CRC32 checksums
- MemTable - Concurrent skip list with MVCC timestamps
- SSTable Writer - Can persist sorted data to disk
- SSTable Reader - Binary search, block caching, efficient lookups
Learning Outputs
Section titled “Learning Outputs”- 8 Blog Posts - Documenting our daily journey
- 1 Tutorial - Build your own key-value store
- ~2,400 lines - Of actual implementation code
- 30+ Tests - Showing how components work
IN PROGRESS
Current Focus - Storage Engine - Connect components together - Basic Operations -
Section titled “Current Focus - Storage Engine - Connect components together - Basic Operations -”Simple get/put interface - Integration Tests - Verify components work together ### This Week’s Goals - Create storage engine that uses all components - Implement basic get/put operations - Write comprehensive integration tests - Document the integration process
FUTURE EXPLORATION
Near Future (Months) - Compaction strategies - Block cache for performance - Bloom filters
Section titled “Near Future (Months) - Compaction strategies - Block cache for performance - Bloom filters”for efficiency - Compression support ### Far Future (Someday) - Transactions with MVCC - Distribution with Raft - Network protocol - Production optimizations
Phase 1: Storage Foundation 🏗️
Section titled “Phase 1: Storage Foundation 🏗️”Goal: Understand how databases persist data reliably
In Progress 🚧
- Component integration - Storage engine API - Basic get/put operations - Integration tests
Next Up 📋
- Compaction logic
- Manifest files
- Recovery process
- Performance metrics
Phase 2: Database Operations 🔧
Section titled “Phase 2: Database Operations 🔧”Goal: Make it actually work like a database
What This Means
Section titled “What This Means”get(key) -> Option<value>put(key, value) -> Result<()>delete(key) -> Result<()>scan(start, end) -> Iterator
Learning Challenges
Section titled “Learning Challenges”- How to integrate components efficiently
- When to flush MemTable to disk
- How to merge multiple data sources
- Error handling across layers
Phase 3: Advanced Storage 📊
Section titled “Phase 3: Advanced Storage 📊”Goal: Understand optimization techniques
Topics to Explore
Section titled “Topics to Explore”- Compaction: Why and how databases merge files
- Caching: Block cache design and trade-offs
- Bloom Filters: Probabilistic data structures
- Compression: Space vs. CPU trade-offs
Why These Matter
Section titled “Why These Matter”Real databases spend most complexity here. Understanding these optimizations teaches:
- Why databases make certain trade-offs
- How to think about system performance
- When optimization actually matters
Phase 4: Transactions 🔄
Section titled “Phase 4: Transactions 🔄”Goal: ACID properties and isolation levels
Learning Path
Section titled “Learning Path”- MVCC Basics - We already have timestamps!
- Snapshot Isolation - Read consistency
- Write Conflicts - Detection and resolution
- Transaction Manager - Coordinating it all
Phase 5: Distribution 🌐
Section titled “Phase 5: Distribution 🌐”Goal: Scale beyond a single machine
The Dream
Section titled “The Dream”- Consensus: Raft protocol implementation
- Sharding: Data distribution strategies
- Replication: Fault tolerance
- Coordination: Distributed transactions
The Reality
Section titled “The Reality”This might remain a dream, but planning it teaches us about:
- CAP theorem in practice
- Network partition handling
- Consistency vs. availability trade-offs
How We Work
Section titled “How We Work”Human Assigns
“Let’s implement SSTable reader”
AI Implements
Code + explanation of decisions
Human Reviews
Questions lead to understanding
Both Learn
Document insights in blog
Success Metrics
Section titled “Success Metrics”What Success Looks Like
Section titled “What Success Looks Like”- Understanding > Performance
- Learning > Features
- Journey > Destination
How We Measure
Section titled “How We Measure”- Blog posts documenting insights
- Tutorials teaching others
- Code that explains itself
- Questions that lead to “aha!” moments
Get Involved
Section titled “Get Involved”Follow the Journey
- Read: Our blog for daily progress - Learn: Tutorials to build your own - Explore: Current code with comments - Contribute: GitHub - questions welcome!
The Honest Truth
Section titled “The Honest Truth”We don’t know if we’ll build a distributed database. We might get stuck on transactions. We might discover that compaction is harder than expected. That’s the point.
This roadmap isn’t a promise - it’s a learning adventure. Join us to discover:
- How databases really work
- Why certain designs win
- What makes systems programming hard
- How human-AI collaboration can tackle complex problems
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single cargo test