Warning: I am neither a skilled nor experienced programmer. I would say the kernel of programming languages is more practically something like C, assembly, or machine language. Kernel implies containing the core functionality, the building blocks. Van Roy&#x27;s kernel language does seem to contain core ideas for ideal programming languages, even though it doesn&#x27;t seem to translate well to existing hardware &#x2F; machine language.<p>After reading a bit about it I started to think of it as pseudocode for programming languages, and I thought I&#x27;d share some results from my searching based on that idea [1].<p>&quot;In terms of the kernel language itself, it is in fact its own programming language, a sort of &quot;runnable pseudocode&quot; that is executable in the Mozart&#x2F;Oz platform.&quot;<p>Here&#x27;s an interesting link I found by searching for database pseudocode [2]. This delves into the topic of &quot;NoSQL&quot;, which might be helpful in your database basics research, but it also covers other database basics.<p>I am also not very skilled nor experienced with databases, but based on your request, one database that comes to mind for me is Berkeley DB. It is the building block for lots of other technologies, and is also considered one of the origins of the NoSQL concept. Here&#x27;s a recent relevant discussion that probably made me think of it [3] (that and it is the basis for a distributed filesystem I&#x27;m studying). Also, check out the Wikipedia for it, and (maybe obvious to you already) searching site:news.ycombinator.com on Google can get you a lot more interesting discussions on any topic.<p>Here&#x27;s one more random link I found [4], just because it has a lot of summaries on different types of NoSQL databases.<p>Again, this is all far from expert advice, which is probably really what you need, but I thought I&#x27;d just share with you what I found in my attempt to understand this &quot;kernel language&quot; concept and apply it to databases.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;michaelrbernste.in&#x2F;2013&#x2F;02&#x2F;23&#x2F;notes-on-teaching-with-the-kernel-language-approach.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;michaelrbernste.in&#x2F;2013&#x2F;02&#x2F;23&#x2F;notes-on-teaching-with-...</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jeffknupp.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2014&#x2F;09&#x2F;01&#x2F;what-is-a-nosql-database-learn-by-writing-one-in-python&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jeffknupp.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2014&#x2F;09&#x2F;01&#x2F;what-is-a-nosql-dat...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10148242" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10148242</a><p>[another old one] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=3613638" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=3613638</a><p>[4] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bigdata-madesimple.com&#x2F;a-deep-dive-into-nosql-a-complete-list-of-nosql-databases&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bigdata-madesimple.com&#x2F;a-deep-dive-into-nosql-a-compl...</a>