When you commit a transaction you update the transaction table slot that identifies your transaction to show that the transaction is committed – this is a change to an undo segment header block so it generates a redo change vector. THe handling of this vector is completely standard – your session creates a redo record from it and puts the record into the log buffer – which means it is applied to the undo block at that moment, which means everyone can now see the effects of your transaction. AFTER the record is in the redo buffer your session will post lgwr to write the log buffer to the log file and goes into a “log file sync” wait. But this means (a) your transaction is visible to everyone else before it is recoverable (durable) and (b) you’re the only session that thinks the transaction hasn’t yet “really committed”.
Redo | Oracle Scratchpad