[macdice]

Well, conceptually it happens atomically. The change is described in a single WAL (write ahead log) record, and data in the buffers representing the table and undo log isn't allowed to touch the disk until the WAL is on disk, so in any crash/restart scenario that leaves the job half done, we'll simply do it again when we replay all changes since the last checkpoint. A related question is: what happens to the uncommitted change after that? The system recognises that the change belongs to an uncommitted transaction, and rolls it back, which in this case means that we'll copy the old copy back into the main table before allowing any user to access it, and free up the space in the undo log. This is approximately how most other RDBMSes work.

[magicalhippo]

Ah of course, how silly of me to forget about the log. Thank you, that makes perfect sense.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

It's more complex than the above. The key constraint is actually that the transaction is not allowed to return as committed until the WAL is stable on disk. Whether the writes it did to various pages are allowed before that point or held until after is an implementation choice, and different databases make different choices. It gets complex fast, but the short summary is that the recovery protocols understand how to reconstruct the state after the fact, redo what needs to be redone, and undo what needs to be undone.