Reads in options from the specified environment variable or configuration file. See Using configuration files.

If you want to protect passwords or other information in the configuration file, you can use the File Hiding utility to obfuscate the contents of the configuration file. See File Hiding utility (dbfhide).

Specifies connection parameters. The user ID must have DBA authority or REMOTE DBA authority to connect to the database. See Connection parameters.

Specifies how dbbackup processes the database files before writing them to the destination directory. The choice of whether to apply pre-images during a backup, or copy the checkpoint log as part of the backup, has performance implications. If the -s option is specified to perform the backup on the server, the default setting for -k is auto; otherwise, the default setting is copy.

auto   The database server checks the amount of available disk space on the volume hosting the backup directory. If there is at least twice as much disk space available as the size of the database at the start of the backup, then the backup proceeds as if copy was specified. Otherwise, it proceeds as if nocopy was specified. This setting can only be used if -s is also specified.

copy   The backup reads the database files without applying pre-images for any modified pages. The checkpoint log in its entirety and the system dbspace, are copied to the backup directory. The next time the database is started, the database server automatically recovers the database to its state as of the checkpoint at the start of the backup.

Because page pre-images do not have to be written to the temporary file, using this option can provide better backup performance and reduce internal server contention for other connections that are operating during a backup. However, since the backup copy of the database file includes the checkpoint log, which has pre-images of any pages modified since the start of the backup, the backed-up copy of the database files may be larger than the database files at the time the backup started. The copy option should be used when disk space in the destination directory is not an issue.

nocopy   The checkpoint log is not copied as part of the backup. This option causes pre-images of modified pages to be saved in the temporary file so that they can be applied to the backup as it progresses. The backup copies of the database files will be the same size as the database when the backup operation commenced. The backup copies may actually be slightly smaller because the checkpoint log is not present in this copy. This option results in smaller backed up database files, but the backup may proceed more slowly, and possibly decrease performance of other operations in the database server. It is useful in situations where space on the destination drive is limited.

recover   The database server copies the checkpoint log (as with the copy option), but applies the checkpoint log to the database when the backup is complete. This restores the backed up database files to the same state (and size) that they were in at the start of the backup operation. This option is useful if space on the backup drive is limited (it requires the same amount of space as the copy option for backing up the checkpoint log, but the resulting file size is smaller). This setting can only be used if -s is also specified.

Enables a secondary system to be brought up rapidly in the event of a server crash. A live backup does not stop. It continues running while the server runs. It runs until the primary server becomes unavailable. At that point, it shuts down, but the backed up log file is intact and can be used to bring a secondary system up quickly. See Differences between live backups and transaction log mirrors and Make a live backup.

If you specify -l, then you cannot use -s to create an image back up on the server.

Changes the naming convention of the backup transaction log file to yymmddxx.log, where xx are sequential letters ranging from AA to ZZ and yymmdd represents the current year, month, and day. This option is used in conjunction with -r.

The backup copy of the transaction log file is stored in the directory specified in the command, and with the yymmddxx.log naming convention. This allows backups of multiple versions of the transaction log file to be kept in the same backup directory.

You can also use both the -x option and the -n option to rename the log copy. For example

dbbackup -c "UID=DBA;PWD=sql" -x -n mybackupdir

Sends formatted progress messages from the database server to the client.

The -p option is ignored unless the -s option is used to perform a server-side backup.

For information about formatted progress messages, see progress_messages option.

Renames the transaction log and starts a new transaction log. It forces a checkpoint and causes the following three steps to occur:

Backs up the existing transaction log, deletes the original log, and then starts a new transaction log. Do not use this option if you are using database mirroring. See Database mirroring and transaction log files.

Deletes the current transaction log and starts a new one. This operation does not perform a backup; its purpose is to free up disk space in non-replication environments. Do not use this option if you are using database mirroring. See Database mirroring and transaction log files.