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Advanced Database Concepts

ACID Properties & Transaction Management

  • Transaction isolation levels (Read Uncommitted, Read Committed, Repeatable Read, Serializable)
  • Concurrency control mechanisms (2PL, MVCC)
  • Deadlock detection and prevention
  • Recovery mechanisms and WAL (Write-Ahead Logging)
  • Distributed transactions and 2PC (Two-Phase Commit)

Query Processing & Optimization

  • Query execution plans and cost estimation
  • Join algorithms (Nested Loop, Hash Join, Merge Join)
  • Index selection and usage strategies
  • Statistics and cardinality estimation
  • Query rewriting and transformation
  • Materialized views optimization

Database Architecture

  • Buffer management and caching strategies
  • Storage engines (Row-based vs Column-based)
  • Partitioning strategies (Horizontal, Vertical, Hash)
  • Replication patterns (Master-Slave, Multi-Master)
  • Sharding architectures and distributed databases
  • High availability configurations

Advanced Indexing

  • B-Tree and B+ Tree structures
  • Bitmap indexes for high cardinality
  • Partial and covering indexes
  • GiST, SP-GiST, and GIN indexes
  • Hash indexes and their limitations
  • Index maintenance and optimization

Database Design Patterns

  • Temporal database patterns
  • Polymorphic associations
  • Hierarchical data structures
  • Event sourcing and CQRS
  • Multi-tenant architectures
  • Data warehouse schemas (Star, Snowflake)

Performance & Scalability

  • Connection pooling strategies
  • Load balancing techniques
  • Caching layers (Application, Database, Distributed)
  • Vacuum and maintenance operations
  • Resource management and capacity planning
  • Performance monitoring and profiling

Data Integration & ETL

  • Data pipeline architectures
  • Change Data Capture (CDC) patterns
  • ETL vs ELT approaches
  • Real-time data integration
  • Data quality and validation
  • Master data management

Security & Compliance

  • Row-Level Security (RLS)
  • Column-level encryption
  • Audit logging mechanisms
  • Access control patterns
  • Data masking techniques
  • Regulatory compliance (GDPR, HIPAA)

NoSQL Concepts

  • CAP theorem implications
  • Consistency models (Strong, Eventual)
  • Document store design patterns
  • Graph database modeling
  • Time-series data handling
  • Key-value store use cases
  • NewSQL databases
  • Serverless databases
  • Multi-model databases
  • Stream processing integration
  • Machine learning integration
  • Blockchain databases