Spring 2013





Preparation for Recitation 18

Read the paper The Recovery Manager of the System R Database Manager.

This is a long and difficult paper. The introduction summarizes the whole of System R, which provides a number of features beyond the recovery features focused on in this paper. You should read this section, but do not worry if there are details you do not understand. Sections 1 and 2 are the meat of the paper, and you should try to understand them as much as possible. Because this paper is quite dense, you may wish to skim these sections first, trying to understand the basic approach to recovery. Section 3 is a retrospective on the recovery features of System R; you do not need to focus on the details of this section, but you should read it quickly as it provides an interesting discussion of things that were problematic in the design presented in the previous two sections.

If there are terms or concepts you did not understand while reading the paper, be sure to ask about them in recitation!

As you are reading the paper, think about the different mechanisms the system provides. For example, do shadow files and logging solve the same problem in System R, or different problems? Why are both mechanisms there?

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