Durability Glossary

Browse 4 durability terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

4 Durability Terms

Transaction Log: An append-only, sequential record of every write operation performed on a database, written to disk before the actual data pages are modified (write-ahead...
WAL: Write-Ahead Log — a technique where all modifications are written to a sequential log file before being applied to the actual database pages. If the database...
WAL Replay: The crash recovery process where a database reads its write-ahead log from the last checkpoint and re-applies committed transactions that weren't yet written...
Write-Ahead Log: A durability technique where changes are first written to an append-only log before being applied to the main data structure. If the system crashes mid-write,...