SQL Anywhere Product Futures Discussion

Sybase forum users will recognize "SQL Anywhere Product Futures Discussion" as the title for the sybase.public.sqlanywhere.product_futures_discussion newsgroup on the forums.sybase.com NNTP server. It's available from your web browser, but I won't put a link here because every one of the several HTTP / HTML interfaces to the NNTP forums are, well, inadequate.

Besides, the NNTP forums are reaching the end of their usefulness, which is why I'm not going to post suggestions there any more... I'm going to post them here, starting now...

DB_PROPERTY ( 'BackupInProgress' )

There should be a database property which answers the question, "Is a database backup process in progress?" It would apply to the BACKUP statement and the dbbackup.exe utility.

The question arises, should the answer be as simple as yes/no, or more complex? The continuous live backup process comes to mind, where the answer would always be yes... maybe live backups should be excluded.

And what about database versus log-only backups? Should the response be db/log/both/no?

That's what "discussion" is for; if you have an opinion, post a comment here.

One reason for having this property is so database monitor programs, like Foxhound and the SQL Anywhere Monitor, could adjust their behavior when a backup is running; e.g., they could recognize that server I/O processing will change in behavior, and that checkpoints will be suspended.

Another reason might be so you can write code that starts a backup as long as one isn't running already, perhaps a second redundant process that makes sure a backup is taken even if some other backup process failed.

DB_PROPERTY ( 'BackupSuccessfulAt' )

This database property should answer the question, "When was the last backup taken?" It should return NULL if there never has been a successful backup, or the timestamp when the most recent successful backup finished.

In my opinion, this request doesn't need any justification... it's hard to think of any question more important than one involving database backups. And today, there is just no reliable way to answer the question, certainly not easily.

I'm guessing live backups don't count here, if only because then never finish unless there's a problem; e.g., the server crashes, so dbbackup loses connectivity... and a database property is useless if the server ain't running.

Should there be different properties for different backup types? e.g., 'DBBackupSuccessfulAt', 'LogBackupSuccessfulAt', 'FullBackupSuccessfulAt'... more discussion!