Database / RocksDB Basics Interview Questions
What data structure implements RocksDB's default MemTable?
RocksDB's default MemTable implementation uses a skip list to keep incoming writes ordered by key.
- A skip list supports efficient, roughly logarithmic-time insertion and lookup, similar in spirit to a balanced tree
- Keeping the MemTable sorted means it can be flushed directly into an already-sorted SSTable with no extra sorting step needed
- RocksDB is also pluggable here, alternative memtable implementations exist for specific workload patterns
The skip list's combination of simplicity and efficient ordered access is a big part of why it was chosen as RocksDB's default in-memory structure.
What data structure implements RocksDB's default MemTable?
Is the MemTable implementation fixed, or can it be swapped out?
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