journal
journalling
<operating system> An on-going record of transactions, such as
{database} updates, {file system} writes, procedure calls or
message transmissions. A journal differs from a simple {log}
in that the contents of the journal can be used to reconstruct
the state of the system after a failure by re-applying the
transactions in the journal to a snapshot of the system
previous state.
(2008-05-29)