A durable history.
The write-ahead log records operations for recovery. Synchronisation establishes their durability.
ORDINUM / ENGINEERING & FIELD NOTESRUST NATIVE. INDEPENDENTLY BUILT.
An independent storage engine
ORDINUM
ORDER FROM EVERY WRITE.
Storage, from
first principles.
A Rust-native LSM database engine. Built around the journey from incoming operations to ordered, persistent data.
THE ARCHITECTURE OF ORDERWRITE / FLUSH / MERGE
Start in memory.
Memtables collect updates before flushing them into immutable, sorted files.
Order in layers.
Sorted runs organise keys on disk. Indexes and filters help narrow the search for a value.
Merge with purpose.
Compaction combines runs and reclaims obsolete versions when they are no longer needed.
Built in the open. Still taking shape. These are the principles behind the engine, not a checklist of completed features.
Follow the implementation ↗On the shelf / The journal
Read beneath the surface.
Long-form engineering notes. Real design decisions. A working record of how a storage engine is built.
Write Path
Coordinating Batch Commits for Concurrent Durable Storage
Read articleWrite Batches
Grouping write operations in Ordinum and using Rust's type system to represent batch states
Read articleThread Local Storage Matrix
How Ordinum implemented thread local storage for it's subsystems and the design decisions involved.
Read articleInside the product
Small details.
Deep engineering.
Ordinum explores the machinery behind a log-structured merge-tree storage engine. The journal documents that work as it develops; the source is the place to inspect the implementation.
Explore the source ↗Every operation has a journey.
Batches, sequencing and commit coordination connect the caller to the WAL and memtable.
Read about writes →Know what owns what.
Rust types, allocation lifetimes and thread-local storage shape how the engine manages its work.
Read about threads →The reasoning is part of the work.
These are evolving engineering journals, not a claim of production readiness or a finished reference manual.
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