Techniques for increasing the usefulness of transaction logs

摘要

Techniques for making light-weight checkpoints in logs of streams of transactions and for extending the logs from the checkpoints. The state saved in the light weight checkpoint need only include the state of all transactions that are active at a prior point in the log and are still active at the checkpoint. A log is extended from the checkpoint by processing new transactions in the transaction stream beginning at the prior point to produce the extending log. When the checkpoint is reached, the state saved at the checkpoint is used to continue to produce the extending log. Techniques are further disclosed for selecting points in the stream of transactions at which the checkpoints may be made and for determining the distance between checkpoints. As disclosed, the log in which the checkpoints are used is a logical log made from a physical log produced by a relational database system. The logical log may be used for replication and for data mining.