In the following table are the five operations that can be performed on the event logs.
| Operation | Function |
| Backup | BackupEventLog |
| Clear | ClearEventLog |
| Query | GetOldestEventLogRecord, GetNumberOfEventLogRecords |
| Read | ReadEventLog |
| Write | ReportEvent |
The OpenEventLog, OpenBackupEventLog, RegisterEventSource, DeregisterEventSource, and CloseEventLog functions also open and close event log handles; this provides an object-oriented model for the function set, as well as some performance gain when performing multiple operations on the logs.
The OpenEventLog and ReportEvent functions take an optional server name as a parameter so that the operations can be performed on the remote server. OpenEventLog should be used for reading or performing some administrative operation (backup, clear, query) on the log, and RegisterEventSource should be used for writing to logs.