> We have IB 6.0.1.6 ib server on Win98 PC.
> We now have 3 remote sales points, and soon we will have few more.
> What we are doing now is:
>
> Guys in remote sales points generate every evening DBF file with
> their complete sales from the beining of the year. These DBF files
> are becoming larger and larger (60.000 rows, 14000 rows and 16.000
> rows this morning).
> Here, in headquter of company, we have a table PJ inside our IB
> database, and this table we empty every morning, and than fill it
> again with fresh data (about 90.000 rows this morning, from 3 sales
> points).
> During the day, I do 5 backups of database without garbage colection,
> and it last very short - about 90 seconds.
> In the evening, the guys are responsible to do backup which do
> garbage colection, and last evening it was stending 15 minutes saying
> that it is processing table PJ. For this backup we use application
> which uses IB services.
>
> OK, I hope I described problem good. Questions:
> 1. Is it OK for BACKUP with Garbage colection to last so long on this
> table?
> 2. Is there some other way to "import" these data from remote points,
> so we could avoid these long delete/import/backup procedures ?
>
> Thanks and regards,
>
> Zoran Zivkovic

Firstly, yes, you are deleting all ther recrods adn then inserting them so
garbage collection may easily take this time.
Secondly, if these remote stations are online - you could replicate your
data. this would mean that you only ever insert new records and never insert
the whole year's data every night. By end of December your inserts/deletes
will be very large. With replication, your cycle would be real time and very
low bandwodth in comparison.
Check IBPhoenix.com for several replication tools.
If this doesn't suit, then there are several "copy" systems which may offer
better solutions.
Alan