Databse backups - Dangers?

[Martin Dashper]

I wish to perform timed backups of my database using the timer event.
Since the event is independent of whatever code is running at the
time, are there any data loss issues with this idea.
If a table is being written to when the timer event triggers, will the
writing of the data continue when the event has finished, ready to be
backed up at the next timer interval or will the unwritten data be
lost?

Martin Dashper

 

[Albert D.Kallal]

Not a good idea at all.

There is the potential to introduce instability to the application also.
Code running to write out some record data..and another process now starts
to copy, or back up the data.....hum...

If your code simply takes a particular table...and starts a query on
it..then you can likely well be ok.

It is just not clear "what" your backup code in the timer event is doing. Is
it doing a whole file copy...or just some query on a table to export data?
(The 2nd concept I mention should be reasonably workable).