This session demonstrates a bunch of great ideas that make databases work, with examples from a small database written in TypeScript.

Most of us use databases regularly, but have you ever wondered how they work? Despite being the foundation of fifty years of technological progress databases are a black box to most people who use them, and that's sad, because they are awesome. Non-stop academic and industrial progress, from System R to Clickhouse, has made database systems outstanding monuments to the engineering excellence our field is capable of, but rarely achieves.

As the magical school bus shrunk us down for strange and wonderful journeys through the human body, so this presentation will be an action-packed, day-in-the-life blast through database query execution, including simplified, but real demonstrations of query parsing, planning and execution.

Ever wanted to know how an index actually works? What's the difference between row-oriented and column-oriented storage? How does schema vs schema-less affect database performance? Come learn why databases deserve your love and respect.