You may have been using relational databases in your PHP applications for a long time (PHP loves MySQL after all) but you might not have ever dug deep enough to understand how those databases work internally. In this detailed tutorial from Coding Geek they dive way in and cover everything from the basics out to complex sorting, management components and query handling.
When it comes to relational databases, I can’t help thinking that something is missing. They’re used everywhere. [...] you can google by yourself “how does a relational database work” to see how few results there are. [...] Are relational databases too old and too boring to be explained outside of university courses, research papers and books?
As a developer, I HATE using something I don’t understand. And, if databases have been used for 40 years, there must be a reason. [...] Over the years, I’ve spent hundreds of hours to really understand these weird black boxes I use every day. Relational Databases are very interesting because they’re based on useful and reusable concepts. If understanding a database interests you but you’ve never had the time or the will to dig into this wide subject, you should like this article.
He covers a wide range of topics during the post:
- O(1)) vs O(n2) (or how data sets are handled based on size)
- Array, Tree and Hash table
- Global overview (structure of the database system and its pieces)
- Query manager
- Statistics (and optimizing storage of the data)
- Data manager
Each of these topics comes with a lot of explanation, examples of how the internals are functioning as well as diagrams to help make a bit more sense. If you've ever really wanted to know how that database you use functions, this is definitely the article to check out.