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Having worked on mission-critical databases on a regular basis, I can never stress enough just how important having a clone really is. While in some cases, it’d be nice to have a copy of myself running around and helping me out, that’s not quite the type of clone I’m talking about… so, if you manage a FileMaker database,and that’s the only type of clone you know about then you owe it to yourself to continue reading.
FileMaker provides a very nice feature allowing you to create clone files of your database. These clones are exact copies of your database files minus all of the data. It’s not very often that I need to use them, but in some cases there can be the difference between having a database to run your business with, and not having a database at all. The latter could be a total nightmare for most businesses these days.
Much like any file on a computer, your database files can be susceptible to corruption. Corruption can affect not only the data within your database, but also the actual schema that makes up the database as well, and it’s not always because of user error either. Circumstances beyond your control can contribute to file damage. As an example, lightning could strike, and your server might shut down because of it.
(I could discuss the use of redundant power supplies, and battery backups, but that’s an entirely different article unto itself).
If your database should fall victim to file corruption, you might be faced with files that no longer open at all.
Even under these circumstances, you’re not completely out of luck. FileMaker also provides a ‘Recover’ option to try to get your files up and running again. The recover option will often get your database files to a stage where you can at least extract your data from them. (As a side-note, extracting data is the only thing I recommend using a recovered file for).
Once the data has been extracted from the recovered file, it’s a good practice to import that data into a working clone. This will provide you with the highest chances of having good data within a good database.
With the introduction of the new FileMaker Server 11, server administrators now have the option to save a clone copy of their databases with their backups.
This makes it quite easy to create clones of your files in a multi-file solution, and practically eliminates any excuse you might have had before for not having a working clone. My recommendation is to use this new feature, and make sure you have a good, working clone from the last time any development was done on your solution.
4 Comments
Further explanation:
Corruption can be present in your files without you knowing about it. Keep one cloned copy of each of your files from each development cycle to make sure you have a good working schema/interface. Tools like “Recover” do whatever they can to try and salvage your data… sometimes at the expense of interface/schema. Please let us know if you have any other questions!
-Matthew Leering
Creating clones minus the data is not useful when you have multiple tables as it will be too time consuming to import the data into each table.
The objective of data recovery is to do it in the shortest possible time and the best way to do that would be to back up the entire database at regular interval.
Hi Clifford,
While it is very important to maintain regular backups, we have found that also keeping a clone from the end of each iteration of the development cycle works very well for us.
Maintaining integrity of a mission-critical database is always time well spent, and with the integration of this new feature in FileMaker Server 11, saving clones of your files (even in multi-file solutions) has become extremely quick and simple.
- Matthew Leering