Principles of transaction-oriented database recovery

Abstract

In this paper, a terminological framework is provided for describing different transactionoriented recovery schemes for database systems in a conceptual rather than an implementation-dependent way. By introducing the terms materialized database, propagation strategy, and checkpoint, we obtain a means for classifying arbitrary implementations from a unified viewpoint. This is complemented by a classification scheme for logging techniques, which are precisely defined by using the other terms. It is shown that these criteria are related to all relevant questions such as speed and scope of recovery and amount of redundant information required. The primary purpose of this paper, however, is to establish an adequate and precise terminology for a topic in which the confusion of concepts and implementational aspects still imposes a lot of problems.