Backup Analyst
Purpose
Backup and recovery are probably the single most important tasks of a DBA. Backup Analyst provides efficient help here to the DBA.
Installation, System Requirements, supported SQL Server versions
The installation of Backup Analyst is simple and straightforward. During this installation several (extended) stored procedures are pushed onto the target SQL Server instance. These procedures hold the code for the proprietary Backup Analyst Agent.
To install Backup Analyst, you just need to specify the target SQL Server instance name and the database. 5 MB of disk space are required.
Upon finishing the installation, the SQL Server service needs to be restarted once.
Just like the other Analysts’ will Backup Analyst work with any SQL Server version starting with SQL Server 7.0.
Description of Backup Analyst
After successful installation, you will see the above screen. Backup Analyst is a graphical GUI to all Backup, Restore and Recovery operations in SQL Server. Handling of Backup Analyst is easy.
All important operations can be accessed from the main menu or from the context menu of the Database Explorer.
When you invoke the Backup Wizard for the first time, another wizard is also invoked. This Job Category Wizard creates three new and unique SQL Server Agent job categories.
Additionally the wizard can create up to 16 different alerts for backup and recovery operations.
These alerts are used by the SQL Server Agent to compare events in the application log to the defined alerts. If there is a match, SQL Server Agent will fire the alert.
You can create either new backup tasks or use “playback” a previous backup operation. The latter could be used to clone a master backup definition file and just change the name of the particular database that you wish to backup.
Just select a different database and give this backup job a different name and you have created the clone.
You can choose among all possible backup alternatives that SQL Server offers.
A highlight of Backup Analyst is the build-in compression and encryption algorithms. The compression algorithm ensures that your backup will run faster and consume less storage space, thus saving time and cost. A strong 128-bit encryption is available to protect backups of sensitive data. Alternatively you can specify to use the Standard SQL Server backup.
Backups can be directed to a backup device or to disk.
Typically you will choose to schedule the backup and thus automate the whole backup process for a given database. But you can also start the backup immediately or open the script in a new editor window.
Command Line Interface
Backup Analyst offers a powerful Command Line Interface (CLI) that lets you perform all the operations that can also be performed via the GUI. Here’s an example such a CLI call (taken from the Backup Analyst online help):
Etsbackupconsole.exe @action=backup_database @Database=[pubs] “@backupfile=c:temppubs.embt.bak” @EncryptionPassword=PASSWORD
For a complete reference refer to the online manual.
Summary and Conclusion
Embarcadero’s Backup Analyst is a full-featured application for Backup and Recovery Operations in SQL Server. It can perform all types of backups SQL Server currently offers and can additionally compress and encrypt backups. It is easy and intuitive to use and can help you automate and secure your backup strategy.
Overall Summary and Conclusion
Each Analyst is by itself a useful and highly specialized tool. The fact that you can get them altogether under the roof of Embarcaderos’ DBArtisan workbench and the fact that they all (with the exception of Backup Analyst) can be used with many of the most commonly used databases management systems make them highly attractive for the enterprise sector and for DBAs facing the challenge of managing a heterogeneous database environment.
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