Archiving versus Deleting Application Logs (BC_SBAL)

Our application log is getting so large that it is causing performance problems.

I noticed that we have never archived or reorganized our application log.

I know that there are 2 options for managing the application log.

1. Tcode SLG2 - Program SBAL_DELETE can be used to purge old or expired logs
2. Archive object BC_SBAL can also be used to archive logs

Which option do you use at your company?

I tried testing the archive functionality in our QA test system and it was very slow.

It took over 7 hours to delete the following number of entries.

Type                               No.    Description

BALDAT                           293,908  Application Log: Log data

BALHDR                            61,254  Application log: log header

BAL_INDX                              13  Application Log: INDX tables

Has anyone else encountered such poor performance?