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 R/3 System and the Enterprise Manager provide functions to perform these tasks.

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 either:

The Enterprise Manager and the R/3 database monitors offer various options to view the size of the R/3 database and transaction log:

• To get a quick overview of the current size of the R/3 data files, use the Enterprise Manager. It shows used space, free space and total space for each database file.

The R/3 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.

• The missing indexes check determines whether any indexes defined in the ABAP/4 Dictionary are missing in the database.