I am not familiar with VFP at all and I need to get a solution in place rather quickly for the backup of it.
What files need to be backed up for a Visual Foxpro database? From the research of have been able to complete it seems just the *.CDX and *.DBF files in a Data directory.
Do we need any of the .BAK or .FPT files? What are these files about?
How does the FOXUSER.DBX/ FPT relate to a backup? Do these need to be completed in a backup?
Is there any way to tell from a system where the data for a database is stored? Ie a Registry entry or other file that I would be able to check, or should I leave this up to the user to choose?
We will be building a cold backup app, and all users should/ would be logged out of the system when the backup occurs.
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You should copy DBF, FPT and CDX.
If you are compressing the files, DBF and FPT can be compressed usually up to 92%. CDX files are index files and don't compress much.
What most advanced developers do is copy DBF and FPT files or by compressing them and a good Reindex procedure in the software should be able to recreate the CDX files.
Settings in Registry if used can be recreated using the settings in the application.
DBF, CDX, FPT files have to be backed up, also if the application is old check if there are IDX , NDX files if so they should be backed up as well. Foxuser.dbf usually resides on the local machine and there is no need to back it up, if users are running an executable (EXE) and its setting up the user environment, the foxuser.dbf serves no purpose at all.
If the backup routine is ONLY backing up/copying files, without reindexing or purging deleted records, it makes no difference if the users are still on. The only thing here is any data saved after the back up will not be on the back up files...
Keep it simple and backup the whole directory. You never know if stored procs also access some .txt, .ini, .log or whatever else files. You shouldn't put what does not belong to the data into the data directory, that's simply it. TBK, BAK and some other file extensions are backup files, if an ALTER TABLE has been made and can be deleted, if that suceeded. As disk storage is cheap I wouldn't bother much about this, though.
Don't forget DBC, DCT, DCX files, these are database file extensions, foxpro does make a difference between free tables (up to the introduction of DBCs all tables were free, even though not called that), and DBC tables that backling to a DBC. The DBC,DCX,DCT files are the three files that make up a special free table, that holds informations about tables, their indexes and in the first few records the stored procs (if they are not stored external). You might also find an extension to DBCs, if Stonefield Database Toolkit is used, then there could even be a vcx.
Turn that question upside down and ask (the developer/ vendor) what files in the data directory are not needed, and then delete these and backup all the rest.
Bye, Olaf.
Sorry, I wasn't reading your question all the way to the end before responding. As you think about the general case and not a special case, there are mainly two situations:
1. Free DBFs in a directory (together with files belonging to them: FPT, CDX, IDX ...)
2. a DBC plus related DBFs
In the second case the DBC file contains info about what DBFs belong to it. In VFP you can use ADBOBJECTS to find eg all views and tables related to the DBC. With DBGETPROP you'll retrieve more information, eg about the path of Tables of the DBC. In short: If a DBC is involved all info about related tables is in there. You just need to remember that CDX and FPT belong to the DBFs, they are not put into the DBC as they belong together anyway.
Nevertheless the point remains: Typically files not belonging to the data may still be used and related to it. It would be a poor programmer and/or user to put non related files into a data directory, so for the simplicity I'd consider whatever is within the same folder as belonging to that database.
Finally about your question, whether Foxpro databases have an entry in the registry or you could find anywhere about what databases are installed at all. There is no such thing, like with Access MDBs foxpro databases are merely files and despite of the fact that foxpro does not put it all into one file it's up to the programmer of a fox app where the data is located.
There is no such thing as SQLDMO listing instances of a server, databases of an instance or such. No system data, no master data. So it's up to you to find what could be a foxpro databse directory. Mainly search for DBC and DBF files. Another useful hint is, that the first byte of a DBF (and in fact also a DBC) will tell you about the type of the DBF, so you can detect, if it's foxpro data, or something different, like dbase or foxbase.
Take a look here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/
Clipper also has the DBF ending, I'm not sure it conforms to the DBF header definition, it's not mentioned in the list, so I don't know if clipper DBFs have other values in it's first header byte.
Don't be confused about .frx, .vcx, .scx, .pjx being mentioned. They ARE tables - right - but mainly they are foxpro source code, not data. VFP does organise class libraries, forms, labels, reports and project files as foxpro tables and therefore these files are tables too and conform with the table header definition.
Bye, Olaf.
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by: tusharkanvindePosted on 2009-05-14 at 21:25:51ID: 24392307
.FPT files are also required. FOXUSER.DBF/.FPT files will not contain any data and you should not normally need to back them up. They may however contain some settings for your program. Normally they are used for development and not in production.
In case the software is multiuser, it will be on a shared drive available with all rights for each user. Other than that, the data can be anywhere.
In VFP, it is always better to have a cold backup. Copying the DBF,FPT and CDX files should be enough.