Details
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Improvement
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Status: Closed
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Major
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Resolution: Fixed
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10.8.2.2, 10.9.1.0
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None
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High Value Fix
Description
In a very large percentage of cases where users need to restore their backup, I have found that they don't have a usable backup to restore. It is often difficult to determine the root cause, so I am not sure of all of these, but my experience and suspicions are:
1) They relied on a operating system backup while the database was not shutdown or frozen.
2) They unknowingly backed up a corrupt database over their good backup because there was corruption that was not readily apparent at the time of the backup.
3) They relied on incremental backups (even when the database was shutdown) that did not properly track deletes.
4) They restored to an existing database directory without removing the old one first.
5) They didn't backup because the Derby backup was not included in the embedding application''s backup procedure.
6) The embedding application's did have a backup/restore procedure but it made one of the mistakes above.
It would be good to think about our backup and restore documentation to make it more visible to users and developers and include tips for good backup procedures. Two things I can think of that might help are.
1) Encourage SYSCS_UTIL.SYSCS_CHECK_TABLE on all the tables of the database before backing up to help flag existing corruption before potential existing issues before overwriting a backup.
2) Put pointers in the Getting Started Guide and the Developers guide to the backup instructions in the Administration manual.
I am sure others have ideas on how to improve the doc. Kim suggested I log this issue and track the various ideas so she can document them for the next release.
The relevant doc references are:
http://db.apache.org/derby/docs/10.8/adminguide/cadminbckupdb.html
http://db.apache.org/derby/docs/10.8/adminguide/radminconsist24642.html