Steffen Heil wrote:

> support is available through VSS as a native part of the Windows operating
> system. As long as at least one NTFS disk is present on a system, these
> systems can be configured to support shadow copies of all disk systems
> mounted on them.
>
> Basically that means that all applications which will be backed up using VSS
> AND have on disk data that might be in inconsistent state, needs to
> implement the VSS Writer interface. However, firebirds databases are by
> default always consistent.
> I don't know wether this is correct for Oracle, but it is (or should be) for
> firebird...

shadow copies created by windows will only be valid if firebird has been
closed down before creating them. The whole point of firebird is to
provide fast - consistent - transparent data management independent of
the operating system, and there would be little point in trying to cater
for an OS specific activity when Firebird has a - in my opinion - a much
more stable facility internally.

That said, when the database grows to a large size, other means that
shadowing would be required to protect it, and in that situation, a
replicated copy on a second machine would be preferable to an attempt to
slavishly clone a copy ;) Or much better a mirrored hardware raid.

--
Lester Caine
-----------------------------
L.S.Caine Electronic Services