Re: Ontape command...

Nathan E. McCorvie wrote: > > Dear Informix Gifted: > > Forgive my Informix ignorance, but I'm desperately in need of help. Can > anyone tell me how the Ontape command works and how to restore from it > without over writing the current DB? Big subject that first request. Short and sweet? Ontape tells the engine to begin an archive and copy all pages (or all recently modified pages depending on archive level) to tape as of the start time of the archive. Second question is a bit vague but I'd guess that someone trashed some records and wants last weeks' version of their table back, right? If the table is the ONLY data in a particular dbspace you can do a dbspace restore, otherwise you will have to construct a set of disks on another machine (you can do it on the same machine but have to be VERY careful) and restore the entire archive there (and the previous archives if it is not a level 0) and then unload the needed old data and copy it to the primary server and reload it there. Ontape archives were designed to protect against hard crashes not fumbling fingers. June Tong wrote a program to extract the data from a single table from an archive tape directly. The program and scripts are in the IIUG Software Repository [see I do recommend other folks submissions ;-)]. Art S. Kagel