# Building a SQL-like Relational Database Engine in C++ From Scratch

> Source: <https://dev.to/kashyapdevansh/building-a-sql-like-relational-database-engine-in-c-from-scratch-42j4>
> Published: 2026-05-22 17:58:19+00:00

Most of us use databases every day.
But at some point I started wondering:
SELECT
statement?So instead of only reading about databases, I decided to build one.
That project became Ark — a SQL-like relational database engine written entirely from scratch in C++.
I wanted to understand the internals of database systems by implementing the pieces myself instead of relying on existing engines or parser generators.
The goal wasn’t to compete with production databases.
The goal was to learn:
Ark currently supports:
COUNT
, SUM
, AVG
, MIN
, MAX
)ALTER TABLE
LIKE
pattern matchingORDER BY
DISTINCT
SAVE
/ LOAD
)Everything is manually implemented.
No external database libraries.
No parser generators.
No embedded SQL engines.
The execution pipeline looks roughly like this:
Query
↓
Tokenizer
↓
Parser
↓
Command Objects
↓
Execution Engine
↓
Storage Layer
↓
Persistence
The project is split into modular components:
CREATE TABLE employees (
id INT,
name STRING,
salary DOUBLE
);
INSERT INTO employees VALUES
(1, "Alice", 95000.0),
(2, "Bob", 72000.0);
SELECT * FROM employees
WHERE salary > 80000.0;
One of the most interesting challenges was implementing joins and schema evolution.
Handling:
ALTER TABLE
became much more complicated than I initially expected.
Parser correctness and diagnostics also took a surprising amount of effort.
Building Ark taught me a lot about:
It also gave me a much deeper appreciation for real database engines.
GitHub Repository:
https://github.com/kashyap-devansh/Ark
I’d genuinely appreciate feedback from people interested in:
Especially suggestions for improving the architecture or query engine.