Log Explorer makes no direct changes to your database. All recovery operations are implemented by writing SQL script commands that you can review before executing them. Because Log Explorer uses the transaction log maintained by the database system, Log Explorer can expose transactions that occurred at any time, and can recover data that was changed or deleted even before you purchased Log Explorer. Products that use triggers have several problems. Triggers must be installed before problems occur, and the triggers must be rebuilt any time the table schema changes.
Trigger based systems add run-time overhead, and require additional disk space to store result data.
By using the system transaction log, Log Explorer avoids all of these shortcomings. Log Explorer installs a small component that is active only when the client component requests log data. The server component's behavior is akin to a standard network service, waiting for incoming connections before taking any action. Because the server component simply reads log data for transmission to the client component, the server component does not diminish the performance of the server machine. At the present time, Log Explorer ships only with support for SQL Server.