Databases

This page has some bookmarks about databases.

One day I would like to see a graph database that I could use as the main data store as confidently as PostgreSQL or SQLite. I don’t think graph databases are there yet, but a few could reach that point.

Contents

Writings

Graph model

• “Survey of Graph Database Models”, Renzo Angles, Claudio Gutierrez2008.
• “Do We Need Specialized Graph Databases? Benchmarking Real-Time Social Networking Applications”, Anil Pacaci, Alice Zhou, Jimmy Lin, M. Tamer Özsu2017.

Historical DBMS

• “CODASYL Data-Base Management Systems”, Robert W. Taylor, Randall L. Frank1976.

Relational model

• “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks”, E. F. Codd1970.
• “Against SQL”, Jamie Brandon2021. Summary: the relational model is great; SQL is verbose, fragile, and closed to interaction with other systems. It makes it difficult to factor out reusable patterns. “The entire database industry is hauling a massive SQL-shaped parachute behind them. This complexity creates a drag on everything downstream.”

Understanding and using modern RDBMS

• “How Postgres Makes Transactions Atomic”, Brandur2017.
• “Let’s Build a Simple Database”, Connor Stack.
• Use The Index, Luke! A Guide to Database Performance for Developers, Markus Winand.

Software

Interesting database engines. Open source unless noted otherwise.

Embedded

• Firebird.
• SQLite.

Graph

• Dgraph. Distributed.
• HyperGraphDB
• LemonGraph. Embedded (Python). Made by the NSA.
• Nebula Graph. Distributed.
• RedisGraph. Fast due to the use of GraphBLAS. Shared-source license. EOL announced in 2023.

Key-value

• FoundationDB. Distributed. Has a document and a record layer.