ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Log shipping

Okay, so imagine you have a toy car and you want to give it to your friend who lives far away. You can’t just throw it to them, right? You need to ship it.

Now, let’s pretend that your toy car is actually information stored on a computer, and your friend’s computer is in a different place. Log shipping is the process of copying that information (called a database) from your computer to your friend’s computer in a safe and organized way.

Just like if you were shipping your toy car, you need to make sure the database arrives in good condition and without any important pieces missing. To do this, log shipping separates the database into small chunks called “logs” which are sent to your friend’s computer one at a time.

Your friend’s computer keeps track of each log they receive, and once they have all of them, they use them to build the complete database, just like building a toy car with all the right pieces.

Log shipping is useful because it allows people to share information quickly and easily even if they are in different locations, just like shipping a toy car to a friend.