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A curated reading path through the site

This site covers deep technical architecture across database internals, cloud infrastructure, AI systems, and distributed platforms. Explore our flagship multi-part series below or select your role for a sequenced concept ladder.

Featured Technical Series

Browse all series →
Flagship 29-Part Series

From Metrics to Root Cause: LLM-Assisted Database Performance Troubleshooting

A 2026 systems engineering field guide to deterministic telemetry collection, statistical anomaly detection, LLM-assisted hypothesis ranking, and human-authorized remediation across MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MongoDB, Valkey, Elasticsearch, and vector search.

Read the full 29-article series → Architecture Deep Dive

Scaling Writes

Write-heavy architecture patterns across PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, Apache Cassandra, and Aurora. Partitioning, write amplification, MVCC bloat, and batching strategies.

Read the Scaling Writes series → Operations & Internals

Database Reliability Playbook

Production internals, connection pooling storms, autovacuum capacity engineering, failover blast radius, and zero-downtime schema deployments.

Read the Reliability Playbook → AI Systems & Agents

AI Engineering Operating Model

Safely running autonomous agents in production: eval-driven development, token economics, database-enforced read boundaries, and MCP tool orchestration.

Read the AI Operating Model series →

Role-Based Reading Ladders

Each path is sequenced as a concept ladder — every article builds on the previous one.

For the DBA & Database Engineer

Deep dives into PostgreSQL and MySQL internals, incident runbooks, and zero-downtime migrations. Read in this order.

  1. MVCC Explained Like a Database Engineer — how readers and writers avoid blocking each other
  2. WAL Explained for Database Engineers — the foundation behind crash recovery and replication
  3. PostgreSQL Autovacuum: What Every Engineer Should Know — why it's a capacity problem, not a maintenance task
  4. PostgreSQL Slow Query Triage Workflow — from symptom to fix
  5. Database Connection Pooling: Why Apps Kill Databases — the failure mode teams discover too late
  6. PostgreSQL Connection Storm Runbook — what to do when it's already on fire
  7. Schema Deployment Risk Checklist — the 12 checks before any live migration
  8. Database Changes in CI/CD — migrations, backfills, and rollback paths
  9. Database Alert Design — thresholds that fire on saturation, not noise
  10. Database Reliability Playbook (full series)
  11. From Metrics to Root Cause: LLM-Assisted Database Performance Troubleshooting (29-part series) — evidence-based triage across MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MongoDB, Valkey, Elasticsearch, and vector search
  12. Scaling Writes (full series) — write-heavy architecture patterns across PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, Cassandra, and Aurora
  13. Oracle to PostgreSQL ROI Calculator

For the Cloud & Platform Engineer

Terraform, GitOps, CI/CD, multi-region systems, and cloud provider decisions. Read in this order.

  1. Terraform State Is a Production Dependency — state deserves the same controls as your database
  2. Terraform Plan Review: What Senior Engineers Look For — the eleven checks beginners miss
  3. Terraform Drift Triage Workflow — detect, classify, reconcile, prevent
  4. Aurora vs RDS: The Operational Difference Engineers Actually Feel — what changes at 03:00
  5. Multi-Region Architecture: Latency, Consistency, and Blast Radius
  6. AWS vs Azure vs GCP vs OCI: Database Decision Framework
  7. Black Friday Database Readiness — capacity checks before peak traffic
  8. Cloud Platform Architecture (full series)
  9. Cloud Architecture Review Checklist

For the AI Engineering Reader

Safely running agents, evals, RAG architectures, database guardrails, and MCP. Read in this order.

  1. Agent Loop Anatomy for DB & Cloud Engineers — how agents plan, call tools, and observe results
  2. Evals Are the New Unit Tests for Agents — why test coverage is not enough
  3. The Agent Should Not Have Your App Credentials — database-enforced read-only access
  4. Natural Language SQL Agents Need Database Guardrails — role design, SQL parsing, and audit records
  5. Runtime Boundaries for Agentic App Builders — what agents can read, write, call, and spend
  6. Agent Autonomy Ladder — when to auto-approve vs require human confirmation
  7. Tool Search vs Loading Every MCP Tool — token-efficient tool selection at runtime
  8. AI Engineering Operating Model (full series)
  9. Vector Search Systems (series)
  10. From Metrics to Root Cause (29-part series) — LLM-assisted database and vector search performance triage across 7 engines

For the Manager & Architect

Decision frameworks, operating models, risk reviews, and the calls that are hard to reverse. Read in this order.

  1. System Design Starts With Failure Modes — draw the failure path before the happy path
  2. Queues vs Streams: The Decision Engineers Keep Reversing — the one question that determines which is right
  3. Idempotency Keys: The Small Table That Saves Distributed Systems
  4. AWS vs Azure vs GCP vs OCI: Database Decision Framework
  5. System Design Review Checklist for Senior Engineers
  6. Product Catalog Modeling Decisions — relational, document, search, or all three
  7. Architecture Review Checklists (full series)
  8. Database Modernization Tools

For the New Reader

The absolute fundamentals, ordered as a concept ladder. Each one builds on the previous. Read in this order.

  1. System Design Starts With Failure Modes — the mental model behind everything else on this site
  2. MVCC Explained Like a Database Engineer
  3. WAL Explained for Database Engineers
  4. Queues vs Streams: The Decision Engineers Keep Reversing
  5. Idempotency Keys: The Small Table That Saves Distributed Systems
  6. Caches Do Not Remove Database Load — unless you design the miss path
  7. System Design for Database Engineers (full series)
  8. Best Of — the highest-signal posts across all topics
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