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Level 3 · Ph.D

Advanced Databases & Data Systems

Ph.D syllabus · 56 phases · +1 year

Every unit this programme teaches, in the order it is taught. Headlines only — the material itself opens once you are enrolled.

Dates, price and prerequisites

1. Phase 0 From engineer to researcher
2. Phase 1 The storage design space at research depth
3. Phase 2 Modern hardware for data systems
4. Phase 3 In-memory indexing
5. Phase 4 Concurrency primitives
6. Phase 5 Measurement discipline
7. Phase 6 Reading the literature
8. Phase 7 B+tree engineering at depth
9. Phase 8 LSM at depth
10. Phase 9 Buffer management research
11. Phase 10 Specialized index internals
12. Phase 11 Text-search internals
13. Phase 12 Compression at depth
14. Phase 13 Learned index structures
15. Phase 14 Storage capstone
16. Phase 15 Rewriting & algebraic equivalences
17. Phase 16 Cardinality estimation
18. Phase 17 Cost models
19. Phase 18 Join ordering
20. Phase 19 Optimizer architecture: Volcano/Cascades
21. Phase 20 Robust & adaptive query processing
22. Phase 21 Optimizer capstone
23. Phase 22 Beyond tuple-at-a-time: vectorized execution
24. Phase 23 Columnar storage & open formats
25. Phase 24 Query compilation
26. Phase 25 Parallel execution: morsel-driven
27. Phase 26 Joins & hash tables at depth
28. Phase 27 Aggregation & window functions at scale
29. Phase 28 Execution capstone: lynxdb-col
30. Phase 29 Serializability theory at depth
31. Phase 30 Isolation in the real world
32. Phase 31 Serializable snapshot isolation
33. Phase 32 Modern in-memory concurrency control
34. Phase 33 The MVCC design space
35. Phase 34 Logging & recovery at depth: ARIES
36. Phase 35 Concurrency capstone
37. Phase 36 Consistency models as contracts
38. Phase 37 Impossibility & trade-offs: CAP, PACELC, FLP
39. Phase 38 Consensus I: Paxos
40. Phase 39 Consensus II: Raft implemented
41. Phase 40 Distributed transactions
42. Phase 41 Partitioning & elasticity at depth
43. Phase 42 Weak coordination: CRDTs
44. Phase 43 Distributed capstone: Raft-replicated lynxdb
45. Phase 44 Cloud-native architecture & the lakehouse
46. Phase 45 Modern OLAP & time-series engines
47. Phase 46 HTAP: dual-format designs
48. Phase 47 Streaming, CDC & incremental view maintenance
49. Phase 48 Vector, graph & deductive systems research
50. Phase 49 Testing distributed databases: Jepsen
51. Phase 50 Deterministic simulation testing
52. Phase 51 Formal specification & model checking: TLA+
53. Phase 52 Research method
54. Phase 53 Capstone I: the original contribution
55. Phase 54 Capstone II: the verified publication
56. Phase 55 Frontier & what's next