SQL-Engineering-Handbook

Module 15 — Asset Specifications & Status

This file is the accurate, current record of every visual asset in this module: what exists, what it shows, and what was deliberately excluded. Nothing below is aspirational — if an asset is listed as built, it’s in the repository at the path shown; if it’s listed as excluded, the reason is stated rather than left implicit.

assets/diagrams/ — SVG (12 diagrams, all built)

File Referenced in Content
index-scan-vs-table-scan.svg File 01 Full table scan vs. index seek, side by side, with relative cost annotations
btree-structure.svg File 02 3-level B+Tree — root, internal nodes, linked leaf nodes
composite-index-order.svg File 03 Nested physical sort order of a 3-column composite index
leftmost-prefix-rule.svg File 03 ✓/✗ checklist of query shapes against INDEX(a, b, c)
clustered-vs-nonclustered.svg File 04 Clustered (leaf = row) vs. non-clustered (leaf = pointer) comparison
covering-index.svg File 05 Non-covering (2 I/O) vs. covering (1 I/O) lookup comparison
write-vs-read-tradeoff.svg File 06 Read speed vs. write throughput as index count grows
indexing-workflow.svg File 06 OLTP vs. OLAP indexing decision flowchart
index-selectivity.svg File 07 Selectivity comparison: customer_id vs. status
query-optimizer.svg File 07 Cost-based optimization decision flow
execution-plan.svg File 08 Join plan tree with estimated-vs-actual row annotations
index-lifecycle.svg File 10 Healthy → degraded → maintained index lifecycle

assets/diagrams/ — Mermaid (3 sources, all built)

Three diagrams are inherently decision flows rather than structural comparisons, so each also has a Mermaid source, embedded directly as a collapsible <details> block immediately after its SVG in the corresponding .md file (GitHub renders Mermaid natively — no image load required):

The remaining 9 diagrams are structural/comparative rather than flow-shaped (B+Tree structure, side-by-side comparisons, bar-style selectivity charts) and are intentionally SVG-only — a Mermaid flowchart isn’t a natural fit for that content, and forcing one would produce a worse diagram, not a more complete asset set.

assets/images/ — built

All three README-level assets specified for this module are complete.

assets/images/ — deliberately excluded

Five PNG “screenshot-style” images were originally scoped (ecommerce-indexes.png, banking-example.png, healthcare-example.png, warehouse-schema.png, explain-output.png). These are not included, and this is a deliberate decision, not an oversight: a generated image styled to look like a real terminal/EXPLAIN capture would misrepresent actual query output, which runs directly against this module’s own accuracy standard. The correct path to these, if wanted, is to run the corresponding .sql file against 00_SETUP.sql locally and capture a real screenshot — every query that would appear in one of these images is written and ready to run in Files 01, 06, 08, and 09.

Design System Reference

All diagrams share one visual language, for anyone extending this set: paper-white background with a faint grid (#FAFAF7 / #E8E4D9), ink-navy linework (#1A1F2B), teal for the index/fast path (#147D7A), amber for the scan/slow path (#C2410C), monospace labels (IBM Plex Mono), sans-serif titles (IBM Plex Sans), and a corner-tick-mark “blueprint” frame on every canvas. The README hero/social/thumbnail assets use an inverted dark variant of the same palette (#0B1420 background, #2DD4C7 accent) to read correctly as a banner image rather than an in-page diagram.