Has sufficient research been done to warrant destruction of what is
currently there?
According to the postgres research papers, the no-overwrite storage
manager has the following attributes...
* It's always faster than WAL in the presence of stable main memory.
(Whether the stable caches in modern disk drives is an approximation I
don't know).
* It's more scalable and has less logging contention. This allows
greater scalablility in the presence of multiple processors.
* Instantaneous crash recovery.
* Time travel is available at no cost.
* Easier to code and prove correctness. (I used to work for a database
company that implemented WAL, and it took them a large number of years
before they supposedly corrected every bug and crash condition on
recovery).
* Ability to keep archival records on an archival medium.
Is there any research on the level of what was done previously to
warrant abandoning these benefits? Obviously WAL has its own benefits, I
just don't want to see the current benefits lost.