Hi everyone,
I have to extract from Transaction Log information about the insert/update/delete operations. I am now trying the Log Explorer from Lumigent - which seems to solve my issue in a very cool way - only I'm not sure whether the company is willing to buy the product (one licence for each server on the cluster). So I would probably develop a parse from scratch, to interpret something like Record Data from the result of something like DBCC log(databasename, type=4). I don't know where to find a description of the binary format.
Any idea will be very helpful and greatly appreciatedl!

Sorry to give this answer:

Some time back I checked this Q with Kalen Delaney the author of Iside SQL Server 2000. (One of the Hardcore SQL Server Books) This is what his response is:


Thanks for writing.

Microsoft will not release info about the internal structure of the transaction log. Everything they were willing to tell me is in the book. Lumigent figured it out on their own by analysis of the files at the lowest level. It took many people working for many many months to figure it out, and that is why their product is so expensive. There is no way I could do the same thing on my own.

-Kalen Delaney


As far as I know, there is know way of reading transaction log unless Microsoft discloses the information (I am wondering why they keep it as such secret) or you Find it yourself.


Preethi
(G.R.Preethiviraj Kulasingham)

Her response. Kalen Delaney is a woman.
http://www.insidesqlserver.com/author.html

regards
David Cameron

After trial and error I have found how you can create a trigger on a table that will show what is happening in your tables. This shows that you can log the original value before change, the new value after change, who changed it and when. This sample is based on the authors table in the Pubs db.




/* This is the sample Log table*/
CREATE TABLE [LogTable] (
    [LogID] [int] IDENTITY (1000, 1) NOT NULL ,
    [FromLine] [char] (100) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL ,
    [RECID] [varchar] (50) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL ,
    CONSTRAINT [PK_LogTable] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED
    (
        [LogID]
    ) ON [PRIMARY]
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
/* This is the sample TRIGGER TO be added to the authors TABLE IN the Pubs db*/
CREATE TRIGGER [LogTrig] ON [dbo].[authors]
FOR INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE
AS
DECLARE @Myvar char(50), @Myvar2 Char(50)
SET @myvar = (SELECT au_id FROM deleted)
SET @Myvar2 = (Select State FROM authors WHERE au_id = @myvar)
INSERT INTO LogTable
(fromLine,RECID)
SELECT 'Changed State FROM ' + isnull(state,'<NULL>') + ' TO ' + isnull(rtrim(@MyVar2),'<NULL>') + ' BY ' + SYSTEM_USER + ' on ' + convert(char,getdate()),au_id
FROM deleted


Thanks,
Jesse