Lambda the Ultimate

VMKit is an LLVM project; per the announcement at the Proceedings of the 2008 LLVM Developers' Meeting:

VMKit is an implementation of the Java and .NET Virtual Machines that use LLVM to optimize and JIT compile the code. This talk [slides, video] describes how VMKit integrates components from various systems, how bytecode translation works, describes the current performance status of the system, and discusses areas for future extension.

I'm a developper on a large project, and regulary have to deal with database performance and design issues. To solve them our DBAs have to explain us many internals of our database system, but tends to do it with the database vendor's point of view (Oracle) as much of their knowledge comes from the books published by the vendor.

As a consequences, I often can't know if the limitations/contraints they exlpain us are intrinsic to relational engines or are specific to Oracle, and this makes technical discussions difficult and frustrating.

I've read Codd's papers and much of the free papers of dbdebunk.com to learn about relational theory and vendors's positions and now I'm looking for a detailed paper or book that explain how to design/write a non-trivial relational database with the usual features (ACID, persistence ...) without being poluted by a vendor point of view.

Until now, I failed to find something that match this description: I only found beginner-level documents or some open source docs that explain technical issues with specific problems.

I hope it's not too implementation-related for LtU and that someone can help me.