You might look at books by Michael Stonebraker, such as: www.amazon.com/Readings-Database-Systems-Joseph-Hellerstein/dp/0262693143/ www.amazon.com/The-Ingres-P

You might look at books by Michael Stonebraker, such as: www.amazon.com/Readings-Database-Systems-Joseph-Hellerstein/dp/0262693143/ www.amazon.com/The-Ingres-Papers-Relational-Addison-Wesley/dp/0201071851/ To be fair, I've not read these books; I attended a lecture of his at MIT, and he seemed to really know his stuff. If I wanted to study DB implementation, I'd start with his writings.