Pieter,

> I was wondering what options FireBird gives us in regards to backups.
> Imagine you have a FireBird database which gets backed up every night at
> e.g. 3 'o clock. So far, so good. Now, imagine the disk on which the
> database is dies at 6 in the morning.

Well, a HDD crash affects not only the database, but possibly
other user related data as well.

> My impression is that there is no way to get the full data back as it was
> from the just state just before the disk died, right? The only thing you can
> is to restore the backup file but that brings you back to the state of 3 'o
> clock at night.

That's what you get with a backup. A snapshot copy of the database for
a specific point in time, right.

> Is there any option in FireBird to have it keep a transaction log separately
> on e.g. the same disk as the backup file, so that if you lose the other
> drive, you can still restore everything back from just before the crash?

You could use shadows.

But, shadow files have to be on the same machine, but e.g. on another HDD,
as the main (production) database. Be aware, for whatever reason, you
corrupt the database, then this corruption will be reflected in the shadow
as well. AFAIK


Another possibility is to log every change in the production database, and
move those tracked changes into a separate database (that even can be on
another machine, if Firebird is installed there as well), and re-apply
those changes on a working copy of your database, to get up for a specific
point-in-time.

Well, you'd better have a look at the IB LogManager Product family,
especially here, for some further details.
http://www.upscene.com/products/audit/iblm_redo.htm


HTH,
Thomas Steinmaurer
LogManager Serie - Logging/Auditing Suites supporting
InterBase, Firebird, Advantage Database and MS SQL Server
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com