Do you see any drawbacks for transaction logs?


While transactional logs are critical to databases for the purposes of monitoring and disaster recovery, it can have a few disadvantages.

  • Disk space resource intensive

Each SQL transaction statement can write one or more log statements into the log. This log keeps growing with every minute of the database in use. For a large organization with critical and massive databases this would mean a huge investment in hardware.

  • Disk-write transaction execution overhead

Even with the advanced lightning speed processors having even a few micro seconds of transaction time overhead, for every disk write logging action, can slowly add up, and even become a bottle-neck for time critical and real time database computations.

  • Need for transaction log management system

In order to efficiently manage resources – both hardware disk space as well as transaction turnaround and throughput, as well as make the logs streamlined, and ready to be consumed by analysts, a transaction log management system needs to be in place, within the database management system. This can add to the complexity and costs involved.