Adaptive Server maintains the history of successful and failed backups from dump database and dump transaction commands in a dump history file. Adaptive Server reads the dump history file to restore a database, and generates the load database and load transaction sequences that are required to restore the database to a specific point in time.
Each Adaptive Server instance has a dump history file with information about all database dumps and server configuration dumps, successful or not. The default location of this file is the location specified with the -m startup parameter, or the $SYBASE directory if -m is not specified.
Back up dump history files with this syntax, where file_name is the name of your dump history file:
dump configuration with file = dump_hist
The default dump history file name is dumphist.
Each line in the dump history file represents a dump record. Dumping a database to many stripe devices results in dump records for each stripe device. Dump record fields are separated by tabs.
Dump records include information about:
Record types
Database IDs
Database names
Dump types
Total number of stripes for dump operations
Remote Backup Server names
Dump current sequence numbers (timestamp for the current dump)
Dump previous sequence numbers (timestamp for the previous dump)
Dump creation times
Stripe names
Dump server names
Adaptive Server error numbers
Password-protected information (Boolean value indicating whether the backup is password protected)
Compression levels
Highest logical page numbers (the highest logical page number in the database that was dumped)
Status
The dump history file is read and written by Adaptive Server. The user starting Adaptive Server requires appropriate read and write permissions to the dump history file.