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Carla Sanches
Carla Sanches

Posted on • Edited on

How an RDBMS works #1: Lessons from “The Internals of PostgreSQL”

Introduction

Hi! My name is Carla, and I am a software engineering intern at Bitnine Global, where I work with the Apache AGE team, developing the plugin for graph search in PostgreSQL. With this post, I am starting a series to talk about the architecture of database management systems using PostgreSQL as an example.

To do this, I will use the book "The Internals of PostgreSQL" by Hironobu Suzuki as a basis. My goal is to simplify the language of the book so that the content is friendly to students who wish to understand how a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) works and to present use cases so that the content is useful for database administrators too.

In the future, I will talk more about Apache AGE. But if you're already curious, you can explore the #apacheage hashtag here on Dev.to to learn more. There are several community posts ranging from installation to use cases in real applications.

PostgreSQL is an open-source project for a multipurpose relational database. In other words, you can store and manage various types of data for multiple applications. The system is complex and has several integrated subsystems, which will also be presented in this series of posts. Its main features are robustness, reliability, and scalability. These, among other characteristics, make it one of the most popular databases in the world.

Errata

My intention is to provide access to technology information through reliable sources. If you have found any incorrect information, please let your contribution in the comments below 😊.

References

SUZUKI, Hironobu. The Internals of PostgreSQL for database administrators and system developers. Interdb. 2015. Available at https://www.interdb.jp/pg/. Acessed on 03/08/2023.

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group. PostgreSQL: The World's Most Advanced Open Source Relational Database. Available at https://www.postgresql.org/. Acessed on 03/08/2023.

Contribute to Apache AGE

Apache AGE website: https://age.apache.org/

Apache AGE Github: https://github.com/apache/age

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