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Design Decisions

Rationale behind key design choices in nori-sstable.

Overview

This section explains why nori-sstable works the way it does. Each design decision represents a conscious trade-off, balancing performance, simplicity, and production-readiness.

Key Decisions

Block-Based Organization

Why we use fixed-size 4KB blocks: OS page alignment, compression sweet spot, cache efficiency, and performance validation.

Compression Strategy

Why block-level compression with LZ4 default: decompression speed, cache interaction, and cold storage with Zstd.

Bloom Filter Strategy

Why 10 bits/key with xxHash64 double hashing: false positive rate analysis, whole-file bloom, and loaded-on-open design.

Design Philosophy

nori-sstable follows these principles:

  1. Simplicity over features - Do one thing well
  2. Performance by default - Fast path should be the easy path
  3. Observable - Instrument everything for debugging
  4. Crash-safe - No corruption, ever
  5. Composable - Works standalone or in LSM engines