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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><title>30.2. Write-Ahead Logging (WAL)</title><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css" /><link rev="made" href="pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org" /><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets Vsnapshot" /><link rel="prev" href="wal-reliability.html" title="30.1. Reliability" /><link rel="next" href="wal-async-commit.html" title="30.3. Asynchronous Commit" /></head><body><div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/transitional" class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="5" align="center">30.2. Write-Ahead Logging (<acronym xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="acronym">WAL</acronym>)</th></tr><tr><td width="10%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="wal-reliability.html" title="30.1. Reliability">Prev</a> </td><td width="10%" align="left"><a accesskey="u" href="wal.html" title="Chapter 30. Reliability and the Write-Ahead Log">Up</a></td><th width="60%" align="center">Chapter 30. Reliability and the Write-Ahead Log</th><td width="10%" align="right"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html" title="PostgreSQL 11.5 Documentation">Home</a></td><td width="10%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="wal-async-commit.html" title="30.3. Asynchronous Commit">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr></hr></div><div class="sect1" id="WAL-INTRO"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both">30.2. Write-Ahead Logging (<acronym class="acronym">WAL</acronym>)</h2></div></div></div><a id="id-1.6.17.4.2" class="indexterm"></a><a id="id-1.6.17.4.3" class="indexterm"></a><p>
<em class="firstterm">Write-Ahead Logging</em> (<acronym class="acronym">WAL</acronym>)
is a standard method for ensuring data integrity. A detailed
description can be found in most (if not all) books about
transaction processing. Briefly, <acronym class="acronym">WAL</acronym>'s central
concept is that changes to data files (where tables and indexes
reside) must be written only after those changes have been logged,
that is, after log records describing the changes have been flushed
to permanent storage. If we follow this procedure, we do not need
to flush data pages to disk on every transaction commit, because we
know that in the event of a crash we will be able to recover the
database using the log: any changes that have not been applied to
the data pages can be redone from the log records. (This is
roll-forward recovery, also known as REDO.)
</p><div class="tip"><h3 class="title">Tip</h3><p>
Because <acronym class="acronym">WAL</acronym> restores database file
contents after a crash, journaled file systems are not necessary for
reliable storage of the data files or WAL files. In fact, journaling
overhead can reduce performance, especially if journaling
causes file system <span class="emphasis"><em>data</em></span> to be flushed
to disk. Fortunately, data flushing during journaling can
often be disabled with a file system mount option, e.g.
<code class="literal">data=writeback</code> on a Linux ext3 file system.
Journaled file systems do improve boot speed after a crash.
</p></div><p>
Using <acronym class="acronym">WAL</acronym> results in a
significantly reduced number of disk writes, because only the log
file needs to be flushed to disk to guarantee that a transaction is
committed, rather than every data file changed by the transaction.
The log file is written sequentially,
and so the cost of syncing the log is much less than the cost of
flushing the data pages. This is especially true for servers
handling many small transactions touching different parts of the data
store. Furthermore, when the server is processing many small concurrent
transactions, one <code class="function">fsync</code> of the log file may
suffice to commit many transactions.
</p><p>
<acronym class="acronym">WAL</acronym> also makes it possible to support on-line
backup and point-in-time recovery, as described in <a class="xref" href="continuous-archiving.html" title="25.3. Continuous Archiving and Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR)">Section 25.3</a>. By archiving the WAL data we can support
reverting to any time instant covered by the available WAL data:
we simply install a prior physical backup of the database, and
replay the WAL log just as far as the desired time. What's more,
the physical backup doesn't have to be an instantaneous snapshot
of the database state — if it is made over some period of time,
then replaying the WAL log for that period will fix any internal
inconsistencies.
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