Method and apparatus providing system availability during DBMS restart recovery

A method and apparatus to provide DBMS restart recovery that allows transactions to access data that does not have restart recovery work pending. Access to data requiring restart recovery work to be performed is restricted, and a transaction is denied access to this data. In another embodiment, the invention allows certain transactions to access restricted data that has restart recovery work pending. These transactions are transactions that do not require data consistency. Regardless of the embodiment, the invention allows full recovery to be completed concurrent to the processing of new transactions requiring access to the database. An amount of restart recovery processing may be postponed until after the DBMS has begun accepting new work requests.