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Software Engineering vocabulary · Databases and Persistence

Write-ahead log

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounAdvanced term

In software engineering, write-ahead log means: A log in which a database records changes before writing the corresponding changes to durable data pages.

In Turkish: önceden yazma günlüğü

How it is used

Used in recovery and durability discussions. Recovery details depend on the database's logging and commit rules.

Example sentences

  1. After the crash, the database replayed records from the write-ahead log.

    Logged changes help reconstruct data pages that had not yet been fully written.

  2. The storage team measured write-ahead log growth during the large import.

    Recording many changes can create significant log volume in addition to table data.

Common collocations

  • write-ahead log records
  • replay the write-ahead log
  • transactionA group of database operations that are treated as one unit: either all of them succeed together or none of them is applied.
  • point-in-time recoveryRestoring a database to its exact state at a chosen moment, such as one minute before a bad DELETE, by replaying saved change logs on top of a backup.

More terms: Databases and Persistence

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