# LSM-based Storage Techniques: A Survey

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.07527 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.07527/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 18 Dec 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [A Survey of Learned Indexes for the Multi-dimensional Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06456/) (2024)
- [ARCADE: A Real-Time Data System for Hybrid and Continuous Query Processing across Diverse Data Modalities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.19757/) (2025)
- [PUFFER: Incremental Fuzzy Deduplication for Continuously Evolving Corpora](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.28622/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recently, the Log-Structured Merge-tree (LSM-tree) has been widely adopted for use in the storage layer of modern NoSQL systems. Because of this, there have been a large number of research efforts, from both the database community and the operating systems community, that try to improve various aspects of LSM-trees. In this paper, we provide a survey of recent research efforts on LSM-trees so that readers can learn the state-of-the-art in LSM-based storage techniques. We provide a general taxonomy to classify the literature of LSM-trees, survey the efforts in detail, and discuss their strengths and trade-offs. We further survey several representative LSM-based open-source NoSQL systems and discuss some potential future research directions resulting from the survey.