Okay, this is a fairly basic question. Maybe it's too basic for this forum, but I need help with understanding this. I understand the distinction between redo logs and archive logs, but I do not get the distinction between them and transaction logs. My intuition suggests that both redo logs and archive logs are forms of transaction log, but that doesn't seem to be consistent with a lot of things I've found on the internet. People often seem to refer to the transaction logs as if it were a subset of redo logs.

I know for certain that you can have a DBMS consisting of 12 HDs divided into RAID10 for 1) the system areas 2) the data files and 3) the transaction logs. It's this that makes me think transaction logs is the umbrella term, but I cannot find anything to explicitly confirm or deny that.

If someone could please clarify the distinction, or point me to a source that will make it clear, I would be extremely grateful.