Method and apparatus for incremental undo

Abstract

A method and apparatus for incremental undo is provided. A process, executing in a database system, establishes a rollback entry in an undo log file as a current rollback entry. The rollback entry, which was selected from a set of rollback entries contained in an undo record, contains data that indicates a change made by a transaction to a data block in the database system. The process first determines whether the rollback entry has been applied by testing a status flag. In one embodiment, the status flag is a bit in a bit vector in the undo block. If the rollback entry has been applied to the database, then the rollback entry is not re-applied; rather, a next rollback entry is established from the set of rollback entries and the process repeats. If the rollback entry has not been applied, then undo information from the rollback entry is retrieved from the undo block and change is generated. The status flag is set to indicate that the rollback entry has been applied and a next rollback entry corresponding to the data block is retrieved. The process repeats until there are no more rollback entries to be performed, then the multiple changes are applied to disk in a single atomic operation.