Book on the theory of database design

I am NOT looking for a book on how to build schema for a database along with a bunch of cartoons on what a relation means. I am looking for something on the underlying functionality, such as various indexing schemes, logical storage structures on disk, handling locking, ACID compliance etc. I am into C/C++ but if the examples are in pseudo code, that is fine.

Everything I find when I do searches is all the wrong aspect. I don't know if I need other key words or if what I want is buried in the noise.

Your help is mucho appreciated!

Then what you are looking for is not information on the theory of database design, but information on the theory of DBMS design. Two very different things.

There are two major aspects to the theory of DBMS design. You focus on one of them, which is the implementation of physical storage, performance aspects, etc... In other words, the mechanics of how to handle the data that is stored (the low-level stuff). The other aspect is the high-level stuff: how to implement logical querying, constraints, and data manipulation for the user (in this case, "user" means any client environment, essentially the interface for developers, users, software, etc...).

The second aspect is of course dependent on what sort of DBMS you are interested in building. Standard SQL, Pure relational, hierarchical, object-oriented, XML?

I think discussion of the low-level aspect is pointless without clarification of the high-level aspect, so it is hard to provide further information. But, you might be interested in Foundation for Future Database Systems: The Third Manifesto by C.J. Date and Hugh Darwen, some of the best minds in relational data theory. Also check out the site www.thethirdmanifesto.com , which discusses this book as well as many other aspects of DBMS design, and provides some interesting links to existing projects. http://duro.sourceforge.net is a very simple example.

Not being much of a C/C++ coder myself, I can't point you to any immediate sources for the low-level side of things, but I'm sure there are plenty of books discussing C/C++ data structures, relational algebra, etc...

Other than this, you might also want to check out the source code of some of the open source systems, such as PostgreSQL. In fact, PostgreSQL's backend is very well documented (see http://developer.postgresql.org/) and the C codebase is considered to be textbook-quality code. There is also a seriously large archive of emails between developers in the [HACKERS] section of http://archives.postgresql.org.

Thanks for the info. I think the links you provided are just what I am looking for.