Roberts, Jon, 22.04.2008 14:56:
>> As far as I can tell (from the PDF and your quote) Postgres uses a
> very
>> similar concept as Oracle. .
>> Each transaction has a uniqe number and each tuple contains the
>> information for which transaction number it is visible.
>
> Oracle moves the old row(s) to the rollback segment instead of putting a
> new row in the table as PostgreSQL does. The new value goes right in
> place of the old row and it adds a pointer to the rollback segment.
> A commit removes the pointer and a rollback forces the db to move the
> old row from the rollback segment back in place of the row updated.
> Oracle's rollback segment can be tuned so that retains data up to a
> certain age and then it is flushed. If rollback is too small, you can
> get a "snapshot too old" error.
Thanks, this was exactly the answer I was looking for!
Cheers
Thomas