Resources

Books

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Internals by Kalen Delaney et al

• Previous editions

  • Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Internals

  • The Storage Engine: Inside Microsoft® SQL Server 2005

Pro SQL Server Internals by Dmitri Korotkevitch

Blogs

Paul S. Randal - In Recovery

• The "Inside the Storage Engine" posts were the starting point of Internals Viewer

Paul White - sql.kiwi

• Detailed optimizer and query processor internals information

Websites

SQLServerFast - Execution Plan Reference

• Detailed information about execution plan operators, including algorithms

Documentation

Microsoft Learn - SQL - Internals & architecture

• Pages and Extents

Internals Viewer

Internals Viewer itself was used to decipher undocumented functionality. For example, at the time PAGE and ROW level compression was not detailed anywhere, so adding it involved reverse engineering with DBCC PAGE and the decode selection functionality in the Page Viewer, translating bytes into possible values.

The repo includes a verification tool that compares Internals Viewer vs DBCC PAGE to verify the row cracking.