Double-Entry Ledger Schema: Zero-Drift Balance Architecture
Series Navigation: This is Part 1 of the Core Banking Systems Architecture Masterclass. Master Curriculum Hub | Next: Part 2 — Distributed SQL ACID Latency → | Pillar Hub: Banking Microservices Architecture Double-Entry Ledger Schema: Zero-Drift Balance Architecture Answer-first: A production-grade financial ledger decouples historical transaction journaling from balance derivation by enforcing an append-only immutable architecture. By enforcing the mathematical identity $\sum \text{Debits} \equiv \sum \text{Credits}$ at the schema level, minor integer units, and ring-buffer batching, core banking engines eliminate balance drift, floating-point rounding errors, and catastrophic row contention under 150,000+ TPS transaction throughput. ...