# What you get when you think of Postgres storage as a transaction journal

DevFeed: [What you get when you think of Postgres storage as a transaction journal](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/what-you-get-when-you-think-of-postgres-storage-as-a-transaction-journal-5853.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://neon.com/blog/what-you-get-when-you-think-of-postgres-storage-as-a-transaction-journal>)

Author: Stas Kelvich

Published: 2024-05-01T15:41:36Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Blog -- Neon Docs](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/blog-neon-docs.md>)

Topics: [Database](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/database.md>), [Transactions](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/transactions.md>), [Databases](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/databases.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/data.md>)

Tags: [database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database.md>), [databases](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/databases.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [postgres](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/postgres.md>), [recovery](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/recovery.md>), [storage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/storage.md>), [transactions](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/transactions.md>)

## AI overview

The article explores a transaction-centric way to conceptualize Postgres storage, treating the database as a journal of events rather than only a static collection of data. It explains how Postgres WAL records transactions and database modifications, and how this foundation could support branching data, time-travel queries, and immediate restoration to earlier states.

## Source excerpt

There are two ways to think about a relational database. The first is data-centric. Data is organized into tables with rows and columns, each representing a specific entity or concept. In this mental model of a database, the primary focus is on storing and retrieving data. This m...