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It's a
common scenario to have to look in the folder where your backup
files are stored to find the latest backup set. So say you have a
folder containing only full database backups of the AdventureWorks
database:
Usual practice is to sort the files by the modified date, copy the
newest file name, and paste it into Management Studio to perform
the restore. Now what if your backup tool could identify the latest
backup set for you? What if you could simply add an option to the
RESTORE
command
to tell it to pick up the latest full backup set, like this:
The LATEST_FULL
option
is all you need to restore from the latest full backup set for the
AdventureWorks database in the 'e:\backups\' folder. The usefulness
of this becomes more apparent when you want to restore the database
on a reporting or secondary SQL Server instance. Instead of writing
reams of code to determine the latest backup set, or setting up
linked servers to the source SQL Server instance to query the
backup history tables, you simply use the LATEST_FULL
option
and SQL Backup does the rest.
And why stop there? There is also a LATEST_DIFF
option,
which will identify and restore the latest differential backup set
for you automatically.
Simplicity at its best.
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Document history
| 8/13/2010 | Initial release. |
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