At 10:47 AM 3/29/2004, Edward Flick wrote:

>Assuming I am only selecting or inserting data into my database, what is
>the worst possible outcome scenario assuming the drive is not bad, and
>there is a sudden power loss mid transaction commit:

There is no "mid commit". A commit is an atomic operation, consisting of
the physical write of a single page containing the transaction
state. Before that page is written, all pages that the transaction changed
have been written to disk. The on-disk representation is such that change
written by a transaction that rolls back, or dies in some mishap, are
recognizable and will be removed by subsequent users.

>* Entire database or table absolutely corrupted, gfix won't work

No. If you have forced write on, you should be able to unplug the server,
replug it, and continue.

>* Database corrupted, gfix will fix it, but lose all records involved in
>transaction

No. Or maybe yes and no. If a transaction fails, all its data will be
marked as inconsistent and will be removed overtime.

>* Database corrupted, gfix will fix it, but lose only records which have
>not finished commiting

As above, the commit applies to the state of the transaction. Records
belong to transactions that create them. If their transaction fails, they
disappear. When a transaction modifies or deletes a record, then fails,
the record reverts to its previous state.

>* Database not corrupted, but still lose all records involved in transaction

A record isn't part of the database until the transaction that created it
commits. It may be present on the disk, but logically, it's just useless
bits until the transaction commits.

>* Database not corrupted, but lose only records which have not finished
>commiting

As above.

>As far as I am concerned as long as the database (worst case) does not
>get corrupted beyond repair by gfix, I am fine with storing images in
>the database.

The usual reason for storing images outside the database is sheer database
size which affects the ability to backup and restore the database.


Regards,

Ann
www.ibphoenix.com
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