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Backing Up

When the day's work with Standard ERP is done, we advise you to make a back-up. It is a good idea to save a copy of the file and store it in a safe place. It might seem unnecessary to make a back-up every day, but the short time this takes is a good investment for the day something goes wrong with the hard disk.

To back up your data is particularly important when, as in the case of a Standard ERP database, the financial information of your company is involved. If you should lose all your data, you will find yourself in a very awkward situation, missing all invoices, receipts, reports etc. Make sure you make a back-up each time you have been working with your accounts. Name your copies systematically with dates so that you can easily restore the database, should an accident occur.

If you get a virus on your computer, you must first try to establish the date when your computer was infected. In this case you must restore your data from a back-up created before the infection date. Otherwise you run the obvious risk of re-infecting the computer again.

Standard ERP includes several features to make the task of regularly backing up easier and more efficient. These are:

  1. The "text back-up" method of backing up will copy the data in your database to a separate back-up file.

    The advantage of this method is that the back-up files are independent of the program versions. This means that restoring from a back-up file will be successful, even if you have updated the version of your Standard ERP application since making the back-up. Text back-up files are relatively small, making them easy to manage.

    The disadvantages of this method are that both creating the back-up file and restoring from it are quite slow in very large systems, and the database cannot be used while the back-up file is being created.

    You can create text backups yourself as described here, or you can have them created automatically every day at the same time, as described here.

  2. You can use specialist back-up software to copy the database file ("HANSA.HDB" file) to tapes that can be stored off-site. These back-up files will not be independent of program versions, so restoring from a back-up file may not be successful if you have updated the version of your Standard ERP application since making the back-up. Depending on the back-up software, it might not be possible to use the database while the back-up file is being created.

    Backing up using specialist back-up software is described here.

  3. The "database duplication" method will make copies of the database file ("HANSA.HDB" file). You can have copies made automatically at the same time once or twice every day, or you have copies made continuously.

    The advantage of this method is that the database can still be used while it is being copied. Any records saved between the beginning of the copying process and the end will be included in the copy. The disadvantage is that restoring from a back-up file may not be successful if you have updated the version of your Standard ERP application since making the back-up.

    If you use this method, you must make sure that the hard disk containing your Standard ERP database always has space for the "HANSA.HDB" file and three copies.

    Database duplication is described here.

  4. The "Journaling" feature means that every new or modified record will be saved both in the database itself and in a separate journal file. Should you need to revert to an old copy of the database, you can then "apply" the journal. This will extract from the journal all the records created or modified since the old copy of the database was made and place them in that database.

    Using journaling to restore data is much faster than restoring from a text backup, especially in large systems, as you will not need to re-enter any data manually. However it does require careful management both of the old copies of the database and of the journal files.

    If you use this method, you must make sure that the hard disk containing your Standard ERP database always has space for the "HANSA.HDB" file and the journal file.

    Journaling is described here.

In single-user and small multi-user systems, the text back-up method may play the most important role in your backing up strategy. In these systems, speed of backing up and database access may be less important than the ability to use the resulting back-up files with any version of the Standard ERP application.

In larger systems where the database will be in constant use, it is strongly recommended that you use database duplication and journaling in combination as your main back-up strategy. However, you should still create text back-up files regularly (perhaps monthly or yearly) for archiving purposes. You will be able to use these back-up files together with newer versions of the Standard ERP application if you need to see the contents of your database from a particular date. You will also need to create a text back-up file as part of the process of updating to a new version of the application (this is described here).

Whichever method you use to back up your database, you must also carry out regular checks to make sure you can restore your database from the resulting back-up files or database copies.

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Regularly check that you can restore from your back-up files.


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