Hi, I am a log analyst and I wanna know what exaclty is the info present in the transaction logs? Does it include logging info of Login/Logout, user activities like mail sent/receive/delete? does it have any relation or dependency on the other log types supported by MS exchange 2007 like message tracking, SMTP, agent logs, MRM logs etc? Also, is there any tool by which we can convert the binary format of the logs into human readable format? Thanks, Yuvika

Hi, Actually, transaction log only logs the action stream but not the content. When a message is sent, the transaction is first recorded in the transaction logs. Until the transaction is committed to the Exchange database (EDB), the only existence of this data is in the system memory and the transaction logs. In the event of a crash, you lose the contents of the memory and all you are left with is the record in the transaction log. These transaction logs are crucial to the recovery of a failed Exchange server, whether it was a minor crash that required a reboot, or a more catastrophic failure requiring the deployment of your disaster recovery plans. The same goes for other transactions such as received messages, deleted items and messages moved to different folders. Microsoft do not have any tools to read transaction logs,however there are vendor that will allow you to read the transaction logs. Those vendors include: ApexSQLLumigentLogPIRed-GateAnalyzer. See http://www.platinum.com Log Explorer: http://www.lumigent.com You may refer to the below article to knowmore about transaction log: Understanding Transaction Logging http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb331951(EXCHG.80).aspx Hope it helps. Xiu