This is another frequently asked interview question on Splunk which will test Developer or Engineers knowledge. The transaction command is the most useful in two specific cases:
- When the unique ID (from one or more fields) alone is not sufficient to discriminate between two transactions. This is the case when the identifier is reused, for example, web sessions identified by a cookie/client IP. In this case, the time span or pauses are also used to segment the data into transactions.
- When an identifier is reused, say in DHCP logs, a particular message identifies the beginning or end of a transaction.
- When it is desirable to see the raw text of events combined rather than an analysis of the constituent fields of the events.
- In other cases, it’s usually better to use stats.
As the performance of the stats command is higher, it can be used especially in a distributed search environment
If there is a unique ID, the stats command can be used
