Using the Backup Journals Command

Use the Backup Journal command from the Operation menu to initiate the offline backup of a specified transaction journal.

It is your responsibility to ensure that you manually back up transaction journals. For details, see "What Is a Backup?", "Physical Database Structures", "Transaction Journal Files", and "Backups", in Chapter 3.

To backup your transaction journals

  1. Select the Backup Journals command from the Operation menu.

    The Backup Journals dialog, shown in the following image, is then displayed.

    The journal directory in your current database path is displayed above the Backup Directory combo box.

  2. In the Backup Directory combo box, specify the path name for the backup destination directory where transaction journal files are copied during the backup process. You must specify a directory that is valid for the server.

    Alternatively, click the adjacent browse button (indicated by the … points of ellipsis symbol) to display the common Browse for Folder dialog that enables you to select the directory to which your journal files will be backed up.

  3. In the First Journal Number text box, specify the number of the first journal file that you want to back up. Alternatively, if you want to back up one journal file only, specify only the number of that file. For example, enter 3 in this text box to back up only the journal file db0000000003.log located in the path d:\jade\system\logs\current.

    An error is returned if you do not specify a valid file number in this text box.

  4. If you want to back up a range of files, in the Last Journal Number text box specify the number of the last journal file that you want to back up; for example, 9 (if you want to back up files up to and including db0000000009.log).

    If you do not specify a journal file in this text box, only the journal file specified in the First Log Number text box is backed up. You can specify a single journal file, or the start and end files in a consecutive range of files. You cannot specify a non-consecutive file range.

  5. Check the Verify check box, to verify your transaction journals as they are backed up.

  6. Check the Compress check box, to compress your transaction journal files as they are backed up. By default, backed up files are not compressed.

  7. Check the Overwrite Existing check box, to overwrite any existing transaction journal files in your specified destination backup directory. By default, existing files are not overwritten.

  8. Click the OK button, to initiate the offline backup of your transaction journal. Alternatively, click the Cancel button, to abandon the backup transaction journal operation.

While the operation is running, a progress dialog is displayed that enables you to monitor the progress of the operation. You can abort the run, by clicking the Cancel button.

Information or errors from the backup transaction journal operation are recorded in the backup.log file, located in the default database directory. (To view the log, select the backup.log submenu from the View menu View Logs command. For details, see "Viewing Log Files", later in this chapter.)

If any errors are encountered during the journal backup, the backup log file is removed.

When the operation is finished, the progress dialog is closed and the following message is displayed in the running report.

<<Journal backup complete>>