storage-engine-selector
Storage Engine Selector
When to Use
You have a workload — a new service, an existing system with performance problems, or an architecture decision pending — and need to choose between storage engine architectures: log-structured merge-tree (LSM-tree), B-tree, or in-memory.
This skill applies when the storage engine choice is open, contested, or needs justification. It produces a concrete recommendation (engine family + product + compaction strategy if applicable) backed by a scored 7-dimensional comparison your team can review and challenge.
Prerequisite check: If you do not yet know whether the workload is OLTP or OLAP, run oltp-olap-workload-classifier first. This skill assumes an OLTP or mixed workload. Column-oriented storage for analytics is out of scope here.
Related skills:
data-model-selector— choose between relational, document, and graph models before choosing a storage engineoltp-olap-workload-classifier— classify workload type if uncertain