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Hall of FameC. Mohan et al.1992155 min readpaperadvanced

ARIES: A Transaction Recovery Method Supporting Fine-Granularity Locking and Partial Rollbacks Using Write-Ahead Logging

Read on stanford.edu

Summary

ARIES is a transaction recovery method using write-ahead logging (WAL) that supports fine-granularity locking and partial rollbacks. It introduces the "repeating history" paradigm to redo all missing updates before performing rollbacks of loser transactions during system restart, using Log Sequence Numbers (LSNs) on pages.

  • "Repeating history" ensures all committed changes are reapplied during recovery before any undo operations.
  • Log Sequence Numbers (LSNs) are stored on each data page to track its state relative to the log, enabling efficient recovery.
  • All updates, including those during rollbacks, are logged (compensation log records), ensuring bounded logging even with nested failures.
  • Supports fine-granularity locking (e.g., record-level) and partial transaction rollbacks.

This paper introduced the ARIES algorithm, which became the de facto standard for transaction recovery in many industrial-strength database management systems.

9/10
databasesloggingacidtransaction processingrecoveryconcurrency control

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