A CURATED READING LIST
Query Optimizer Internals
Cardinality estimation, cost models, join enumeration and optimizer frameworks, plus how real systems implement them. Order: 1. Classics 2. Join enumeration 3. Cardinality estimation 4. Frameworks & real systems 5. Courses.
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3·15721.courses.cs.cmu.edu
[1 Classics] The Cascades Framework for Query Optimization (Graefe, 1995)
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More from ReadingTrack curator
Deterministic Simulation Testing
How FoundationDB, TigerBeetle, Antithesis and others make distributed systems testable by controlling all nondeterminism. Order: 1. Why & what 2. Origins (FoundationDB) 3. Modern implementations 4. Libraries to study.
Database Engineering: Replication, Storage & Specialized Systems
A reading path through 12 articles, papers and reference resources on database internals and distributed data systems. Explore logs and change data capture, MySQL replication, caching, Cassandra and Dynamo architecture, SSTable compaction, time-series systems (Gorilla, Goku and AresDB), and graph systems (TAO and Neo4j). Inspired by Tannika Majumder’s database reading collection, linked below as the original source. Reading order and curator notes help connect the resources into a learning path. Start with The Log, then MySQL replication and Netflix DBLog. Continue through caching, distributed storage and compaction before comparing specialized time-series and graph systems. Intended for backend engineers familiar with SQL and basic distributed-systems concepts. Several readings describe historical systems; use them to study design trade-offs. The Cassandra 3.0 documentation is archived and should be read as historical reference, rather than current setup guidance.