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This feature dramatically increases performance for short data-modifying
- transactions. The disadvantage is that because disk writes are
- delayed, if the operating system crashes before data is written to
- the disk, committed data will be lost. This feature is useful for
+ transactions. The disadvantage is that because disk writes are delayed,
+ if the database or operating system crashes before data is written to
+ the disk, committed data will be lost. This feature is useful for
applications that can accept some data loss. Unlike turning off
- <varname>fsync</varname>, asynchronous commit does not put database
- consistency at risk; the worst case is that after a database or system
- crash the last few reportedly-committed transactions might be missing.
+ <varname>fsync</varname>, using asynchronous commit does not put
+ database consistency at risk; the worst case is that after a crash the
+ last few reportedly-committed transactions might not be committed after
+ all.
This feature is enabled by turning off <varname>synchronous_commit</>
(which can be done per-session or per-transaction, if some transactions
are critical and others are not).