Encyclopedia > Write ahead logging

  Article Content

Write ahead logging

In computer science, Write Ahead Logging (WAL) is a family of techniques for providing atomicity and durability (two of the ACID properties) in database systems.

In a system using WAL, all modifications are written to a log before they are applied to the database. Usually both redo and undo information is stored in the log.

The motivation for WAL is to allow updates of the database to be done in-place. The other obvious way to implement atomic update is with shadow paging, which is not in-place. The main advantage of doing updates in-place is it reduces the need to modify indexes and block lists.

ARIES is a popular algorithm in the WAL family.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Father Damien

... he was sent to Hawaii, where he was ordained on May 24, 1864. On May 10, 1873, at his request, he was permitted to travel to Molokai to help the lepers who had ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 25.6 ms