Resources about implementing a database table
Databases have some issues that &quot;mere mortal&quot; data storage doesn't concern itself with, such as transaction safety and disk failure.
Here are a few classic papers on the topic:

Astrahan et al (1976), System R: A Relational Approach to Data Base Management, ACM TOMS 1:2, pp 97-137.
Stonebreaker et al (1976), The Design and Implementation of INGRES, ACM TOMS 1:3, pp 189-222.
Stonebreaker (1987), The Design of the POSTGRES Storage System, VLDB '87, pp. 289–300.

There are also some good books that cover the relevant topics, such as Database System Implementation by Garcia-Molina, Ullman, and Widom.