Reviewing LevelDB: Part V, Into the MemTables

In order to do that, we are going to investigate MemTable. As it turned out, this is actually a very simple data structure. A MemTable just hold a SkipList, whish is a sorted data structure that allows O(log N) access and modifications. The interesting thing about Skip List in contrast to Binary Trees, is that it is much easier to create a performant solution of concurrent skip list (either with or without locks) over a concurrently binary tree.

The data in the table is just a list of key & value (or delete marker). And that means that searches through this can give you three results:

• Here is the value for the key (exists)
• The value for the key was remove (deleted)
• The value is not in the memory table (missing)

It is the last part where we get involved with the more interesting aspect of LevelDB (and the reason it is called leveldb in the first place). The notion that you have multiple levels. The mem table is the first one, and then you spill the output out to disk (the Sorted Strings Table). Now that I figure out how simple MemTable is really is, I am going to take a look at the leveldb log, and then dive into Sorted Strings Table.