[TLBAT] Microsoft SQL Express Edition automated backup

alessandro.panzetta — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:13:30 +0000

An ERP application that the company where I work at the moment is selling, relies on Microsoft SQL databases but, obviously, most of the customers where this application is deployed yell as crazy when they do know the license cost for Microsoft SQL 2005.

So you are at a crossroad:

Install a “friendly” copy that you own
Install the Express/Advanced edition with limits

Seen that you’re a good guy you always install the Express/Advanced edition but you know that you are going to miss lots of functions and opportunities that you’d have with the Standard version…first of all the backup!!!

In order to have similar scriptable feature that you have in the Standard version you can use ExpressMaint that can be scheduled to run at night time so you can perform backups, reindex and so on.

Personally I prefer to have a full backup, compress it with WinRar and then, if no reliable backup device is present at the customer site, send it via ftp to our server.

Hereafter an sxample of a daily full backup of all user databases on a computer called PC01 that will be saved in the c:\backup folder:

c:\ExpressMaint.exe -S PC01 -D ALL_USER -B c:\backup -BU DAYS -BV 1 -T DB

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[TLBAT] Microsoft SQL Express Edition automated backup