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Transaction Journal Backups

Automatic restart recovery after a system failure utilizes the current (online) transaction journal set to recover the database to an operational state.

In a full recovery from a backup, all necessary transaction journal files are used. To effect a full recovery of the database to an operational state from the backup, all archived (offline) journal files created since the backup was performed are required, as well as the current (online) transaction journal set.

For protection against media failure in production systems, always locate the online and archived transaction journals on a different physical volume to the database files, and mirror the transaction journal volume.

You may not be able to fully recover your database if you do not backup consecutively numbered journal files.

Ensure that archived transaction journals are backed up.

Use automated journal close actions, the JADE Database utility, or the JADE database administration framework to perform transaction journal backups. The transaction journal files can be optionally verified (which we recommend).

Specify automated close actions using the JADE initialization file [PersistentDb] section JournalCloseAction parameter.

The JADE database administration framework provides the JournalTransferEvent event, which is caused when a transaction journal is transferred. This event is signaled to notify a monitoring application that an active journal has become offline and can be backed up. You can use the backupJournal method, which supports verification and compression, for this purpose.

The resultant backup file can be verified using the verifyJournal method. For details, see the JadeDatabaseAdmin class in the JADE Encyclopaedia of Classes).

You can perform scripted or manual journal verification by using the JADE Database utility verifyJournal function.

We cannot stress enough the importance of validating the content of the files written.

If you have adequate disk space, don’t remove the archived journals after they have been backed up. Keeping the archived journals resident facilitates faster recovery from a backup, should the need arise.