Fast-start: Quick fault recovery in Oracle

Availability requirements for database systems are more stringent than ever before with the widespread use of databases as the foundation for ebusines s. This paper highlights Fast-Start (TM) Fault Recovery, an important avail ability feature in Oracle, designed to expedite recovery from unplanned out ages. Fast-Start allows the administrator to configure a running system to impose predictable bounds on the time required for crash recovery. For inst ance, fast-start allows fine-grained control over the duration of the roll- forward phase of crash recovery by adaptively varying the rate of checkpoin ting with minimal impact on online performance. Persistent transaction lock ing in Oracle allows normal online processing to be resumed while the rollb ack phase of recovery is still in progress, and fast-start allows quick and transparent rollback of changes made by uncommitted transactions prior to a crash.