Viewing Transaction Logs?

  • Hello All,

    I have an issue w/ an application.  When we make a call to our payment API, we parse the output and determine if the transaction was successful or not.  If successful, the users information is dumped into the DB.  We've done this hundreds and thousands of times w/ no problems. 

    Recently I've had two users who were successfully charged but their information wasn't in the DB.  I suspect there was something that was put into the form that the SP didn't like when it ran, therefore not dumping the data.

    How do I review the tranaction logs to look for that set of commands that ran against the DB?

    Thanks in advance,

    Stephen

  • There are some third party tools which can help you view the actions in the transaction logs. Lumigent's Log Explorer is one such product. I have no direct experience with it, however.

  • Stephen,

    if the transaction never committed, you won't find anything in the transaction log either. The best way to solve these kind of issues is adding some error handling to your procedure.

    Markus

    [font="Verdana"]Markus Bohse[/font]

  • You can see the raw transaction log by

    dbcc traceon(3604)

    dbcc log(1,-1)

    dbcc traceoff(3604)

    for dbcclog the first number is the databaseid (in this case master). This will however only display the active section of the log.

    If a transaction aborted you will still have entries in the transaction log. These transactions will be marked as aborted.

    But this I'd use only as a last resort. There are log reading tools (some of them are free) that will show you what happened in the database.

    Andras


    Andras Belokosztolszki, MCPD, PhD
    GoldenGate Software

  • Thanks Andras.

    Can you give me a few examples of free tools that I might be able to try?

    Thanks.

    Stephen

  • Hi Stephen,

    One tool is Red Gate's SQL Log Rescue

    (I've written its engine, so know this one the best. It is free, works only with SQL Server 2000, and shows committed transactions in a digestible form).

    Other companies and tools I'm aware of are: Lumigent, Apex, LogPI, Quest.

    Regards,

    Andras


    Andras Belokosztolszki, MCPD, PhD
    GoldenGate Software

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