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Use

An important part of the database administrator's work is to perform regular checks of the system. Any problems must be detected and eliminated as early as possible in order to limit the subsequent damage inflicted on the system. Important tasks that should be part of the normal checking routine are database error log analysis, disk space monitoring and database consistency checks. Both the SAP system and the SQL Server Management Studio provide functions to perform these tasks.

Features

Error Log Display

The SQL Server error log informs you whether operations such as backup or restore have been completed successfully and whether any problems have arisen in the system. To access the error log, use one of these:

Disk Space Monitoring

The SQL Server Management Studio and the SAP database monitors offer various options to view the size of the SAP database and transaction log:

  • To get a quick overview of the current size of the SAP data files, use the SQL Server Management Studio. It shows used space, free space and total space for each database file.

    For more information, seeMonitoring the SAP Data Disk

  • To find out how the size of the database has changed over a longer period of time, use the SAP Database Monitor. It gives a tabular overview of the database size history, showing database size and free space for each day of the week.

    For more information, seeMonitoring the SAP Data Disk

  • To reliably work out the maximum size of the SAP transaction log, use the SAP monitor for Backup and Restore Information. It shows a backup history that includes the size of the backups made. By looking at the size of the largest backup you can determine how big an individual log file can become.

    For more information, seeMonitoring the SAP Log Disk

Database Consistency Checks

The SAP system provides a number of checks that enable you to determine whether the database is consistent:

  • The database consistency check examines the entire database to determine whether page links and page reservations are correct.

    For more information, seeChecking Consistency of the Database

  • The table check examines individual tables to find out whether they are physically consistent.

    For more information, seeChecking Consistency of Individual Tables

  • The missing indexes check determines whether any indexes defined in the ABAP Dictionary are missing in the database.

    For more information, seeMissing Tables and Indexes