Database Backup

Question

Scenario

i want to take backup from 7 client database to 1 server database. i dont know structure of the db { either server or client db }. both databases are having old data. now i have to make the tool take the backup for that. and should possible to backup old data also[if any updates done on old data.] please help to find the solution for this. 1. how can i proceed with the problem. 2. database not specified, may be MS access or Sql server 2005 3. In which i can implement this [ I am thinking of doing it in c#]

please help me to find the solution

Answer 1

I'm not sure why you would want to go about it this way - if you are merely trying to copy the client databases (which I interpret as being "file based") then why not simply take copies of their files as part of the wider backup strategy?

If you to write the backup stuff to place all the data in a server based RDBMS, then you are also going to have to think about how you restore that information later on - which presumably means even more coding for you.

So - I don't think this is a good idea, but if you are determined, I would start off by writing a class (which will be almost abstract) dedicated to the purpose of reading the structure of the client database (tables, fields, views etc). I'd then inherit from that to get a specific class for doing this for each individual type of client DB. Once you have that, you can use ADO.Net to read values from the tables in the Client DB, populate datatables with the information, and then write that information back out to the Server based DB.

I really can't stress enough though that I don't like this idea - it seems overly complicated, and also won't deal with functions etc.

Good luck anyway,

Martin

Answer 2

Advisability of doing this aside, one simple answer for a particular subset of the problem would be to create a DSN for a target SQL Server (or any server database) and in Access export table by table to the DSN. You can do this through the Access UI and it can be automated within Access with DoCmd.TransferDatabase. It can be a little fiddly figuring out the proper connect string, and you'd also need to do something about renaming the exported tables so there are no collisions between databases, but that can be handled quite easily in a bit of VBA code.

I post this only because many people overlook the Access capability to export to an ODBC DSN, which requires no writing of DDL and so forth. It may or may not make correct choices about target data types, though, so you'd have to see in any particular situation if it's good enough or not.