user3047: I am thinking about the 'science' of block explorers
When I go to a block explorer and view an address, I see a list of transactions in that address and current balance
Is this technically just the contents of each block being stored as they are created (or retroactively parsed) and assigning a database entry for each new element found in that block?
Or even storing every unconfirmed transaction's data as well?
Writing this out, I think I answered my own question, but maybe there is some more efficient or clever thing going on here

user403: Yeah, that's how they work. For example, blockexplorer.com gets blocks from Bitcoin Core via JSON-RPC, gathers interesting chunks of data, and puts this data into a SQL database for easy access later. The code for this is only ~300 lines long (though it's very messy). Other block explorers work similarly. In fact, Bitcoin Core itself works something like this, though it uses a key-value database instead of a relational database, and it doesn't store any info about addresses.

3047: <p>I am thinking about the 'science' of block explorers</p>

<p>When I go to a block explorer and view an address, I see a list of transactions in that address and current balance</p>

<p>Is this technically just the contents of each block being stored as they are created (or retroactively parsed) and assigning a database entry for each new element found in that block?</p>

<p>Or even storing every unconfirmed transaction's data as well?</p>

<p>Writing this out, I think I answered my own question, but maybe there is some more efficient or clever thing going on here</p>
 403: <p>Yeah, that's how they work. For example, blockexplorer.com gets blocks from Bitcoin Core via JSON-RPC, gathers interesting chunks of data, and puts this data into a SQL database for easy access later. <a href="https://github.com/lirazsiri/blockexplorer/blob/master/bin/blockupdate.php" rel="nofollow">The code for this is only ~300 lines long</a> (though it's very messy). Other block explorers work similarly. In fact, Bitcoin Core itself works something like this, though it uses a key-value database instead of a relational database, and it doesn't store any info about addresses.</p>
