Patent ID: 8271454

Claim:
A computer program product comprising one or more computer-readable storage media having stored thereon computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of a computing system, cause the computing system to perform a method for setting up a log implementation that is configured to manage a circular log and perform detection of an error condition with respect to the circular log, the method comprising: an act of categorizing a plurality of records of the circular log into a plurality of time intervals, comprising: assigning, sequentially, each of the plurality of records a different sequence identifier that identifies an order in which each record of the plurality of records was added to the circular log, each sequence identifier being part of a plurality of sequence identifiers that span the plurality of time intervals; and associating each of the plurality of records with one of the plurality of time intervals during which said record was added to the circular log, wherein each time interval is created in response to a triggering event and wherein each time interval is assigned a unique identifier, the unique identifier being distinguished from the sequence identifier, such that each of the plurality of records is uniquely identified by both a corresponding unique identifier and a corresponding sequence identifier; an act of detecting a checkpoint trigger, that indicates that one or more of the plurality of records are to be removed from the circular log; in response to the detection of the checkpoint trigger, an act of identifying one or more of the plurality of records to remove from the circular log; for at least one of the identified records for removal, an act of preserving sufficient information to determine that the identified record once existed in the circular log and which contains less than the entire identified record, wherein the sufficient information is preserved by storing a particular unique identifier for a particular time interval to which the identified record was associated along with information indicating that a particular sequence identifier corresponding to the identified record once existed in connection with the particular unique identifier for the particular time interval; and an act of removing the identified records from the circular log.