u/Broad-Hair8161

https://2026.sigmod.org/

I wrote about how Log-Structured Merge Trees actually work.

It goes through the write path from WAL → memtable → SSTables → compaction, and covers why LSMs trade read amplification and write amplification the way they do. I also look at leveled vs tiered compaction, skip lists, and Bloom filters, with examples from RocksDB and LevelDB.

I wrote it because a lot of LSM explanations stop at “good for writes,” but that doesn’t help much when you want to understand what the engine is actually doing.

Would appreciate corrections or feedback from people who’ve worked on storage engines.