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PostgreSQL Glossary

Timeline

A sequence identifier for WAL history used during recovery and replication; increments on divergence (e.g., PITR). Example: After PITR, the cluster may sw…

Definition

A sequence identifier for WAL history used during recovery and replication; increments on divergence (e.g., PITR).

What Timeline Means in PostgreSQL

A sequence identifier for WAL history used during recovery and replication; increments on divergence (e.g., PITR).

Timeline appears frequently in production operations, architecture decisions, and troubleshooting workflows. Understanding this term helps teams reason about reliability, performance, and safe change management.

Why Timeline Matters

Teams that understand Timeline can make better decisions on database design, incident response, and release safety.

In modern PostgreSQL environments, this concept often connects directly to backup strategy, performance tuning, and operational confidence.

  • Improves decision quality for production operations
  • Reduces avoidable troubleshooting time
  • Strengthens reliability and recovery planning

Practical Example

After PITR, the cluster may switch to a new timeline; pg_waldump -p shows timeline history.

Where To Learn More

You can explore deeper implementation patterns in the Vela articles library, review platform workflows in How Vela Works, and compare approaches in our PostgreSQL comparisons.

Related Glossary Topics

TPS (Transactions Per Second) Transaction Time Series ACID Atomicity Archiving (WAL Archiving) archive_command archive_mode

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Timeline in PostgreSQL?
A sequence identifier for WAL history used during recovery and replication; increments on divergence (e.g., PITR).
Why is Timeline important?
Timeline matters because it directly affects how teams build, operate, and recover PostgreSQL systems in production.
Can you give a practical Timeline example?
After PITR, the cluster may switch to a new timeline; pg_waldump -p shows timeline history.
How does Timeline relate to backup, recovery, or performance?
In most production deployments, Timeline influences one or more of these areas: data safety, restore behavior, and performance under load.
What should teams check first when implementing Timeline?
Start with clear operational goals, test in a non-production environment, and validate behavior with repeatable runbooks before relying on it in production.