Log-driven backups: A recovery scheme for large memory database systems

A recovery scheme for main memory database systems (MMDBS) is presented. The scheme is both practical and unique compared to other proposals in this area, since it is geared to accommodate databases that are not necessarily memory-resident. The scheme capitalizes on the performance advantages offered by MMDBS, without precluding the possibility of having some portions of the database on secondary storage. The heart of the scheme is an innovative approach to recovery processing in MMDBS that eliminates expensive checkpointing activity, which is the commonly used alternative. The main idea is to have an auxiliary processor in charge of reading log records and applying updates to the disk databases accordingly, without accessing the main memory database at all. The advanced I/O technology of disk arrays is incorporated for the implementation of the approach