At 09:43 AM 24/06/2003 +0100, Artur wrote:

>Ernesto:
>
>The way to do a safe backup is:
>
>- Gbak to create the backup;
>- GBak to restore it on a different place;
>
>This is just like a 'two fase backup'. :-)
>
>Artur
>
>sometimes
> > after a successful backup i can't restore the database because of foreign
> > key, check, parameters mismatch, etc.

A good way to avoid this sort of corruption is **not** to alter metadata by
updating the RDB$ objects directly via DML, but to hold fast to the DDL
language statements provided for the purpose.

I don't know whether this is an issue with your stuff, but I keep seeing
inexperienced developers advising other inexperienced developers to do
it. My attitude is that it falls squarely into the category "Just because
you can, doesn't mean you should". Metadata integrity is far more precious
than an extra few minutes of developer time to do a proper job.

Helen