Understanding LSM(Log Structured Merge) Trees

Explore the inner workings of LSM Tree

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LSM (Log-Structured Merge) Tree is a data structure commonly used in modern distributed and NoSQL databases like Cassandra, and Riak to manage and organize data efficiently. This article explores the inner workings of LSM data structures and explains how they work.

What is an LSM Tree Data Structure?

The LSM Tree was first introduced by Patrick O’Neil and Edward Cheng in 1996. This data structure is designed to optimize write-intensive workloads, where the number of write operations significantly exceeds the number of read operations. It achieves this optimization by separating the write and read operations into separate components and leveraging a disk-based storage system.

The key characteristics and components of LSM Tree include

• Write-Optimized Architecture: LSM structures prioritize write operations, enabling quick writes to an in-memory buffer.
• MemTable: It is a data structure used to store recently modified data in memory. The primary purpose of the MemTable is to provide fast write performance by leveraging the speed of main memory. This helps in providing efficient…