Databases deep dive
Indexes, plans, transactions, and storage engines that scale.
Go beyond CRUD: how indexes work, how to read query plans, isolation pitfalls, and when specialized stores win.
Who this is for: Anyone who touches SQL in production — which is almost everyone.
outcomes
- Design indexes from query patterns
- Read EXPLAIN output for common disasters
- Choose consistency and storage trade-offs consciously
lessons
- 1 Relational mental model Keys, normalization, and modeling for access patterns.
- 2 Indexes and query plans B-trees, covering indexes, and EXPLAIN as a daily tool.
- 3 Transactions, locking, and anomalies Dirty reads, non-repeatable reads, phantoms, deadlocks.
- 4 Scaling SQL systems Replicas, partitioning, connection pooling, and hot rows.
- 5 Beyond relational KV, document, search, warehouse — right tool, right job.