预写式日志

In computer science, write-ahead logging (WAL) is a family of techniques for providing atomicity and durability (two of the ACID properties) in database systems.

In a system using WAL, all modifications are written to a log before they are applied. Usually both redo and undo information is stored in the log.

The purpose of this can be illustrated by an example. Imagine a program that is in the middle of performing some operation when the machine it is running on loses power. Upon restart, that program might well need to know whether the operation it was performing succeeded, half-succeeded, or failed. If a write-ahead log were used, the program could check this log and compare what it was supposed to be doing when it unexpectedly lost power to what was actually done. On the basis of this comparison, the program could decide to undo what it had started, complete what it had started, or keep things as they are.

WAL allows updates of a database to be done in-place. Another way to implement atomic updates is with shadow paging, which is not in-place. The main advantage of doing updates in-place is that it reduces the need to modify indexes and block lists.

ARIES is a popular algorithm in the WAL family.

File systems typically use a variant of WAL for at least file system metadata called journaling.

The PostgreSQL database system also uses WAL to provide point-in-time recovery and database replication features.^[1]

SQLite database also uses WAL.

MongoDB uses write-ahead logging to provided consistency and crash safety.

在计算机科学中，预写式日志（Write-ahead logging，缩写 WAL）是关系数据库系统中用于提供原子性和持久性（ACID属性中的两个）的一系列技术。在使用WAL的系统中，所有的修改在提交之前都要先写入log文件中。

log文件中通常包括redo和undo信息。这样做的目的可以通过一个例子来说明。假设一个程序在执行某些操作的过程中机器掉电了。在重新启动时，程序可能需要知道当时执行的操作是成功了还是部分成功或者是失败了。如果使用了WAL，程序就可以检查log文件，并对突然掉电时计划执行的操作内容跟实际上执行的操作内容进行比较。在这个比较的基础上，程序就可以决定是撤销已做的操作还是继续完成已做的操作，或者是保持原样。

WAL允许用in-place方式更新数据库。另一种用来实现原子更新的方法是shadow paging，它并不是in-place方式。用in-place方式做更新的主要优点是减少索引和块列表的修改。ARIES是WAL系列技术常用的算法。在文件系统中，WAL通常称为journaling。PostgreSQL也是用WAL来提供point-in-time恢复和数据库复制特性