I read SQL Server transaction logs, but still do not quite understand how to use / manage them. I understand that they are important for things like transaction rollbacks, mirroring, replication and sending logs, etc.
For me, they still seem like a black box, and I'm not quite comfortable doing something with them. Are there tools that allow me to view the transaction log file or get information about it? If I don’t need things like sending transaction logs, is it okay for me to compress and / or trim log files periodically? In particular, in the case of restoring backups to a test instance - do I really need a multi-gigabyte log file taking up space? What other functions do you need to know that they have a certain dependence on transaction logs and do not work if I cut / truncate log files?
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