Re: Humor me: Postgresql vs. MySql (esp. licensing)

On Fri, 10 Oct 2003, Vivek Khera wrote:

> >>>>> "sm" == scott marlowe  writes:
> 
> >> will ungracefully kill the DB process(es).  Doesn't matter what DB (or
> >> any other application) you're running, you *can* lose data this way.
> 
> sm> While it is possible to lose a non-committed transaction, WAL prevents the 
> sm> database from becoming corrupted.  Assuming proper fsyncing of your hard 
> sm> drives (i.e. SCSI, or IDE with write cache disabled)
> 
> So you're saying it is not possible to corrupt the WAL if the process
> is ungracefully killed by the OS?

No, but it doesn't matter if it is corrupted, because the corrupted part 
would be at the end, where a transaction was starting, and would just get 
ignored.  i.e. postgresql would replay only the parts of the WAL that 
were complete and showed as committed.