Database Project
A compact database-systems project covering query planning, B-tree indexing, and a transactional buffer-pool mental model.
What the project covered
The database project was a useful way to connect data structures to latency. A query plan is not an abstract tree once it is touching disk pages, cache policy, indexes, and transaction boundaries.
Components
Query planning
Convert relational operations into a plan that can estimate cost before touching the full dataset.
B-tree index
Keep ordered keys searchable while preserving locality for range scans.
Buffer pool
Treat memory as a managed cache over pages, not a bag of objects.
Transaction model
Track when reads and writes are visible, and where rollback needs enough history to be safe.
It made the tradeoffs in production databases feel less magical. When Stockman has a slow inventory query, I know to look at cardinality, indexes, page locality, and access patterns before touching the UI.