What Game Engines Know About Data That Databases Forgot

6 hours ago

Typhon is an embedded persistent ACID database engine in .NET designed for game servers and real-time simulations, using entities, components, and systems.
It combines ECS (Entity-Component-System) architecture with database features like MVCC snapshot isolation for sub-microsecond latency, cache-line-aware storage, and zero-copy access.
Typhon integrates lessons from game engines: cache locality by storing components contiguously, zero-copy reads from pinned memory, and treating entities as pure identity (IDs).
It also adopts database capabilities: ACID transactions with per-component MVCC, indexed selective access via B+Trees and spatial indexes, durability with WAL-based recovery, and query planning.
Components in Typhon support different storage modes (Versioned, SingleVersion, Transient) to optimize for data like inventory (persistent) vs. positions (frequently updated).
Views in Typhon bridge ECS systems and database queries by incrementally refreshing based on changes, avoiding full scans.
Trade-offs include blittable components only, entity-centric relationships (not SQL JOINs), and schema defined in code (C# structs) rather than SQL.
Typhon is purpose-built for game servers, allowing per-operation durability choices and specialized storage for varying data needs.

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