Backup question in MSSQL 7.0

[chosen1]

I'm a newbie to MSSQL 7.0...

I'm scheduling a nightly backup job and there are four different backup options (Complete, Differential, Transaction Log, File..)

If I choose the "Complete" option, will this also backup the Transaction Log? Or do I have to schedule two separate jobs(One for Complete and One for Transaction Log)

Thanks!
-Phil

 

[JayKusch]

Complete will backup the TLog too!

Thanks

J. Kusch

 

[RonPro]

Backups in SQLServer are basically recovery/online backups. [The ability to create tape-based backups right within SQLServer is available as well]

You still need to use Arcserve or perform some other 'offline' backup in case the entire server crashes as well.

The thing to remember is what the different backup options do...

'Complete' is just that - essentially an image of the database at the time of the backup.

'Differential' takes each database page that has changed since the last *FULL* backup and saves those off (therefore requiring less space and the ability to have frequent backups.

'Transaction Logs' are the individual database change journals. These are important particularly in transactional processing where there just might be a chance that you would want to recover a database to a particular 'point in time'. If something went awry at noon today and it was obvious, then you could recover the database to 11:55AM. Of course, any changes after that time would have to be regenerated provided the cause of the problem precipitating the recovery was properly handled.