>I have some ideas about the questions I'm about to ask but I need some other
>opinions. What is the relationship between the activity log retention period
>and the size of the TSM database. For example, the production database that I
>work with has a size of 52 GB and the actlog retention period is 90 days. Would
>the size of the database noticably decrease if the actlog retention was set to
>7 days? (Extraneous info: I piped the output from "q actlog
>begindate=01/01/2003" to file and the file is about 500 MB.)

You've answered your own question as to space usage, via the astute 'q actlog'
experiment.  The Activity Log impact on the database is usually modest,
depending upon how busy your server is.

>Is there a way to "archive" the activity log so that it could be "imported"
>later?

There's no reason to import it - it's just text.  What I - and probably other
shops - do is leave about 30 days worth in the db for convenience, but via
'q actlog' capture period images, redirected to an OS file, which is then
retained somewhere.  In this way I keep five years of server activity logs as
individual day files, in HSM.  These I can inspect with customary Unix commands:
grep, less, etc.

As always, I urge sites to retain activity logs for about as long as your oldest
still-filled tapes, as your reference for inevitable research into how any given
tape ended up the way it is.  Your auditors may impose such requirements.

  Richard Sims, BU