Storage Format Guide

Database File Structure

┌─────────────────────────────┐
│ Page 1: Header + Schema     │  ← First 100 bytes = DB header
├─────────────────────────────┤
│ Page 2..N: B-tree pages     │  ← Tables and indexes
│            Overflow pages   │
│            Freelist pages   │
└─────────────────────────────┘

Page size: power of 2, 512-65536 bytes. Default 4096.

Database Header (First 100 Bytes)

Offset	Size	Field
0	16	Magic: "SQLite format 3\0"
16	2	Page size (big-endian)
18	1	Write format version (1=rollback, 2=WAL)
19	1	Read format version
24	4	Change counter
28	4	Database size in pages
32	4	First freelist trunk page
36	4	Total freelist pages
40	4	Schema cookie
56	4	Text encoding (1=UTF8, 2=UTF16LE, 3=UTF16BE)

All multi-byte integers: big-endian.

Page Types

Flag	Type	Purpose
0x02	Interior index	Index B-tree internal node
0x05	Interior table	Table B-tree internal node
0x0a	Leaf index	Index B-tree leaf
0x0d	Leaf table	Table B-tree leaf
-	Overflow	Payload exceeding cell capacity
-	Freelist	Unused pages (trunk or leaf)

B-tree Structure

Two B-tree types:

• Table B-tree: 64-bit rowid keys, stores row data
• Index B-tree: Arbitrary keys (index columns + rowid)

Interior page:  [ptr0] key1 [ptr1] key2 [ptr2] ...
                   │         │         │
                   ▼         ▼         ▼
               child     child     child
               pages     pages     pages

Leaf page:     key1:data  key2:data  key3:data ...

Page 1 always root of sqlite_schema table.

Cell Format

Table Leaf Cell

[payload_size: varint] [rowid: varint] [payload] [overflow_ptr: u32?]

Table Interior Cell

[left_child_page: u32] [rowid: varint]

Index Cells

Similar but key is arbitrary (columns + rowid), not just rowid.

Record Format (Payload)

[header_size: varint] [type1: varint] [type2: varint] ... [data1] [data2] ...

Serial types:

Type	Meaning
0	NULL
1-4	1/2/3/4 byte signed int
5	6 byte signed int
6	8 byte signed int
7	IEEE 754 float
8	Integer 0
9	Integer 1
≥12 even	BLOB, length=(N-12)/2
≥13 odd	Text, length=(N-13)/2

Overflow Pages

When payload exceeds threshold, excess stored in overflow chain:

[next_page: u32] [data...]

Last page has next_page=0.

Freelist

Linked list of trunk pages, each containing leaf page numbers:

Trunk: [next_trunk: u32] [leaf_count: u32] [leaf_pages: u32...]

Turso Implementation

Key files:

• core/storage/sqlite3_ondisk.rs - On-disk format, PageType enum
• core/storage/btree.rs - B-tree operations (large file)
• core/storage/pager.rs - Page management
• core/storage/buffer_pool.rs - Page caching

Debugging Storage

# Integrity check
cargo run --bin tursodb test.db "PRAGMA integrity_check;"

# Page count
cargo run --bin tursodb test.db "PRAGMA page_count;"

# Freelist info
cargo run --bin tursodb test.db "PRAGMA freelist_count;"

References

• SQLite File Format
• SQLite B-Tree Module
• SQLite Internals: Pages & B-trees