RE: Magic? Or good design?

It's not magic. They explain it in full in the Internal Architecture class. In brief: the physical log is written to a temporary table at any checkpoint during the archive, and these snapshots of changes during the archive are later written to tape. -----Original Message----- From: Neil Truby [SMTP:ntruby@netcomuk.co.uk] Posted At: Tuesday, August 18, 1998 1:12 PM Posted To: Informix Conversation: Magic? Or good design? Subject: Magic? Or good design? Let's assume I'm backing up a large database server with a level 0 archive, which will take 2 hours. I kick off the archive at 0400. The pages that make up the instance are therefore being copied to the archive tape at anything from 0 to 120 minutes after the start of the archive. My users continue to update the server while the archive progresses. The last pages are therefore copied some two hours after the start of the archive, and may have undergone many updates in that time. If I then perform a restore, all pages in the database server will on completion be in the state they were at 0400, even though they may not actually have been copied to the tape for two hours after that. Briefly, how does the engine achieve this? Thanks