Talk:Extensible Storage Engine

Tweak

One paragraph at start neeeded: quick and short comparison to other popular database engines (not Jet Red). What are the main differentiators to MSSQL or Oracle or Lotus Domino. Or MySQL for that matter :) Most visitors are IT people and first of all we need to know where ESE fits in the big picture.

BTW I found this page really incomprehensible. If it's a transactional database engine, just write this in those simple words "it's a transactional database engine". It's not a rocket science. --Kubanczyk 21:03, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I have found some evidence that parts of ESE have been developed solely for use of Microsoft Exchange, and are not documented. Could anything like this be incorporated into the article? (For instance, the "super-long value" SLV/STM file used by Exchange.) Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting it is bad to do this, just looking for details and thought it might be interesting, if anyone can find the sources that I cannot. 209.158.52.182 22:01, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Just an update: 2 relevant API functions are JetAttachDatabaseWithStreaming, JetCreateDatabaseWithStreaming. No hits on Google, so it's probably futile to look any further. 209.158.52.182 22:20, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Just one problem. Wikipedia is not an API reference site. --soum ^talk 07:55, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

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page size

(16 and 32 KB page options are only available in Windows 7 and Exchange 2010)

Does that mean the option has been removed in following editions?

Or is the text from when it was new and should be changed to since?

--Ikar.us (talk) 15:52, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Sequential Access (not)

There is a well-known MS statement "The Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) is an advanced indexed and sequential access method (ISAM) storage technology.". If, as at present in this article, you leave out "indexed and", you fundamentally misrepresent the nature of the storage engine.

ESE presents both a random access and a sequential access API: you can get the 'next' record. The "Technology" is the API. The underlying (B-Tree) storage engine is built on a random-access NT service: NTFS.

B-Tree itself is not a good match to 'ISAM'. A B-tree is a self-balancing tree data structure that allows for efficient data access and management, particularly in databases and file systems. It's particularly suitable for an Extensible storage system, because it allows efficient operation where the table/record structure is not already well-defined. That's the opposite of the use of ISAM, where you have a static structure for individual tables.

Indexed Sequential Access was a technology for tape storage: You get the index value, then run sequentially through the tape (an inherently sequential media) to the position of the indexed value. Sequential access carried over into logical file systems (both Application and OS defined logical file systems). For example, MSDOS defined both Random Access and Sequential Access methods of reading files: Sequential Access was faster, but sequential: you couldn't go backwards, or jump backwards. Because Sequential Access was faster, native database systems on MS DOS often offered Sequential Access methods.

The native database system of MSDOS was folder/file/record. In that system, the 'table' definition was at the file system level. That's not quite the same as defining a 'table' as a tape, but it's also not the same as defining a table as a logical object *inside* a logic object. So, by a stretch, a native random-access MS DOS database system could also be called an 'ISAM' -- it's not sequential, but it's still a 'fixed' structure.

NTFS doesn't even define a sequential access method. Jet Blue / ESE is not an "ISAM" by any stretch of the imagination. ESE does not work with externally defined 'table' structures. It (optionally) presents a sequential access (forward cursor) API, The same way that SQL Server and Oracle do. That does not make SQL Server or Oracle or ESE "ISAM storage technology": it's not a helpful description. ~2026-46296-63 (talk) 09:54, 24 August 2026 (UTC)