Good reading on general database theory?

[Phaedrus]

Hi all,

Can anyone point me to some web sites where I could find some decent
reading on general database theory?... There are several applications I am
in the planning stages of developing which require an organized storage
system for lots of similar data. It is my desire to write some
generalized, simple yet robust database engine for my needs.

I looked at rtfm.mit.edu and found no FAQ for this newsgroup, and a few
web searches haven't turned up anything decisive. I have done some MS
Access design and programming, and have a reasonable handle on databases
from the API point of view, but not much clue about internal structure.
For example: "what's a schema? what's a b-tree? what features do most
databases have in common? how do they work" etc.

Any advice or pointers would be great...

thanks,

ben

[Doug Pierce]

Check out http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/Research/

Phaedrus wrote in message ...

[David Cressey]

Phaedrus wrote in message ...
>Hi all,
>
>Can anyone point me to some web sites where I could find some decent
>reading on general database theory?... There are several applications I am
>in the planning stages of developing which require an organized storage
>system for lots of similar data. It is my desire to write some
>generalized, simple yet robust database engine for my needs.

Have you already made the determination of "buy vs build"? If by "robust
engine" you
mean capable of supporting dozens of concurrent users with decent
concurrency and
correct isolation, and having all the tools a DBA needs for recoverability,
etc. and
having all the interfaces needed for cross platform access by Java, etc.
then you are
looking at a rather large task.

If you just mean a system with a few files that performs pretty well, then
maybe you
don't need a "database engine" at all.

Regards,
David Cressey

[Jean-Marc Vanel]

Phaedrus wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Can anyone point me to some web sites where I could find some decent
> reading on general database theory?.

I recommend you the book

Database
Models, Languages, Design

by James L. Johnson

Oxford University Press 1997 (http://www.oup-usa.org)

Relational, OO, deductive, databases (and others) are presented
in detail, applied to the same case of fishes, tanks and species.

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[stuart....@gmail.com]

Bump!

I'm looking for the same (except now its 2014, not 1999).
What's good reading material today for database design in depth? I'd like something that covers topics such as MVCC, consistent hashing algorithms, CAP theorem, locking schemes, etc..., (as opposed to table design patterns, etc...)

- Stuart

[alec.t...@gmail.com]

Nancy Lynch seems to be THE person, going off: http://brooker.co.za/blog/2014/05/10/lynch-pub.html

E.g.: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1558603484 (textbook) then the CAP paper &etc.