This is the last article, but not the least one, in the SQL Server Transaction Log series. In this series of articles (see the TOC below), we described the Transaction Log concept from four different aspects.

If this is your first visit to this SQL Server Transaction Log series, I recommend you first review the previous articles (see the TOC below), in order not to be familiar with the concepts that we will discuss in this article. Reviewing the previous articles, you will have a good idea about the following:

In this article, we will go through a number of SQL Server Transaction Log recommendations and best practices that each database administrator needs to follow in order to enjoy his holidays and have a pleasant sleep without nightmares or calls during the night.

In the previous articles of this series (see TOC at bottom), we discussed the main concept of the SQL Server transaction, the internal architecture of the SQL Server Transaction Log and finally the Virtual Log File and the best practices in managing the VLFs. In this article, we will go through the relationship between the SQL Server Transaction Log and the three database recovery models.

In this article we’ll review SQL Virtual Log files aka SQL Server VLFs, providing an overview and review topics related to size, performance, monitoring and troubleshooting.

This article will cover SQL Server transaction log architecture including file topography, basic overview, review of LSN and MinLSN, and log truncation

In general, a Transaction is a single unit of work consists of multiple related tasks that should succeed or fail as one atomic unit. To make the concept of the transaction more familiar and why it should go all or none, imagine one of the most critical transaction examples in our daily life, which is withdrawing money from the ATM.