Copy .mdb file

[daytona]

Does anyone know if it is safe to copy an .mdb file when is open (i.e. there is a corresponding .ldb file)?

I want to be able to copy a production database without having to ask users to logout.

Cheers - John

 

[cheerio]

It will not be safe to copy as the tables and other objects may be in an inconsistent state. For instance a user might be increasing everyone's pay by 10% with an update query and you copy when half the people are done. To say the least if you succeeded in a copy and restored half the people would be very unhappy.

Most copy software will ignore or refuse open files for this reason.

Industrial strength databases such as SQL server use the database engine to do the backing up as that knows about open transactions and can guarantee consistency. The Operating system can never do that.

Ken

 

[epoirier]

Me i suggest you to put all new information (Key Field) in temps file with the date & time created and modified. Each day you can backup all record only modified and new record of the previous day in other table (This limit the trafic on server depending the number of record you have in one day). Finaly you can make a backup in real time, i.e. record your all informations in 2 databases.

All this can be done with VBA Dao.Database, Dao.Recordset, etc.

Eric Poirier

 

[daytona]

We already have backups running, so I'm not too concerned about that. It's just for when I want a copy of the live data to test some development work. Thanks for your replies - John