Log is backed up in full if you have an open transaction for long time?

  • Hi,

     

    Rumours say that if you have an open transaction over weekend in SQL 2000 (doing nothing, just begin transaction without commit), have log shipping and/or backup logs frequently and have some kind maintenance running like reindexing, causing you log to grow to XX GB, you end up with full disk due to the fact the log backup would backup the entire XX GB log (without removing inactive entries) each time because of the open transaction instead of  backing up only the changed since last log backup part of the log.

     

    Have anyone encounted such a glitch?

     

    Thanks.

  • When you run the log backup, log will be truncated (means it will free up space) but it will not truncate the portion of active transaction/open transaction...

    One open transaction should not cause the server to run out of space unless your open transaction is too big and there is another big transaction comes in... all it depends..

     

    MohammedU
    Microsoft SQL Server MVP

  • This is in theory how it should be.  Ones some entries in log have been backed up, they will not be backed up again just because there is an idle open transaction that had been on the server for few days.  I am not talking about file shrink.  However I heard different from a person who definetly mastered such basics like database backups long ago and who stated that there is a bug.  I asked this question to confirm if anyone else ever had such a problem and if there is any fix for it.  The problem should relate to SQL 2000 up to SP3.

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