How hash, range, and list partitioning distribute data, how partition pruning speeds queries, and how bucketing and data skew affect real query engines.
Lakehouse catalogs store metadata pointers, manage namespaces, and enforce access control. Here is the complete catalog landscape from Polaris to Glue.
Databases use buffer pools, column caches, and result caches to keep hot data in RAM. Here is how each caching strategy works and what happens when data.
Here is exactly how an engine writes to an Iceberg table, step by step, from data files through the atomic commit that makes ACID guarantees possible.
