When the Message Agent needs to scan transaction logs other than the current log, it looks through all the transaction log files kept in a designated transaction log directory. A setting on the Message Agent command line tells the Message Agent which directory this is.

Example

For example, the following command line tells the Message Agent to look in the directory e:\archive to find old transaction logs. The command must be entered all on one line.

dbremote -c "eng=server_name;uid=DBA;pwd=sql" e:\archive

Log names are not important

The Message Agent opens all the files in the transaction log directory to determine which files are logs, so the actual names of the log files are not important.

This section describes how you can set up a backup procedure to ensure that such a directory is kept in proper shape.