How to take a hot backup from a database SQL Server Express

Question

Is it possible to take a HOT backup from a database SQL Server EXPRESS (2012 or less) by using C# code?

I've seen this article but it doesn't seem to be usable for a HOT backup.

Another solution might be to execute the query "Backup Database ... to disk ..."; how would I launch that?

Answer 1

Yes you can

You can make a call to the backup command in SQL to make a hot backup BACKUP DATABASE [mydb] TO DISK = N'mydb.BAK' WITH NOFORMAT, INIT

Which will write a file to disk.

SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand ("BACKUP DATABASE [mydb] TO  DISK = N'mydb.BAK' WITH NOFORMAT, INIT", connection);
cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();