Tools > Setup> Administration > Database
Allows you to manage and maintain the actual database. Here you can back up or restore data from a back up.
NOTE – If your database is online, your database backups are maintained by TravelMesh. The database server disks are imaged every 30 minutes, and full backups are done every 24 hours and copied to another physical location. If you have an offline database, we recommend you perform regular (daily/weekly) database backups.
Database Backup
This will create a single backup file of the entire Tourwriter database. Choose the backup location and file name, and click the backup button. By default the current date and time will be added to the file name, to make it easier to manage your backups.
IMPORTANT – Local paths are relative to the computer that the database is running on, eg if you enter C:\Backups\ on your computer, the database will back up to C:\Backups\ on the database computer (server).
IMPORTANT – You may get a permissions error when performing the backup. This is due to the restricted permissions of the default Windows account that the database service runs on, which may limit it to saving backups only to the C drive (of the database computer), or even only the database specific folder on the C drive (typically C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\… ). Doing the backup to this location should always succeed. You should never change the permissions on this account, rather you could set up a new account for the database service to run on that has permission to write say to a remote drive for backups – please see your system administrator for this.
Database Restore
This will restore the entire Database to that of the selected backup file (just click the Restore button and follow the prompts to select the backup file, and there are WARNING prompts along the way!).
WARNING – All current database values will be overwritten, reverting back to the values at the point of the backup that you have chosen to restore from. For safety, you should always perform a last minute backup of the database before restoring it from an older backup file.
Backups
Backups must be performed daily if hosting the database offline on your server. If hosting the Tourwriter Database and TourwriterData folder online with Travelmesh all backups are performed automatically.
Backups – If Hosting Tourwriter Offline
If the Tourwriter Database is hosted offline, it is the responsibility of the Tourwriter user to backup the database once each day. We recommend that this takes place at the beginning or end of the day, and not while Tourwriter is in use by any other staff members.
One person should be responsible for performing a TW backup each night. The backup can be made either on Tourwriter on the server machine – or from the Tourwriter user’s own PC. Either way, Tourwriter saves a copy of each backup file to the nominated file as below.
If the TourwriterData folder is hosted by the Tourwriter user, it is the responsibility of the client to backup the folders once each day. If in any doubt, we recommend that a dedicated IT Administrator is used to assist with this.
Backup Instructions
- Open Tourwriter
- Go to Tools > Setup > Database
- Select a file path where the Database will be backed up to
- Tick to add a date/time to file names if required
- To perform a backup, click the backup button
- The last backup file and last backup date are displayed in this window.
- The backup file path will be pointing to a location on your server. For multi-user offline clients where Tourwriter is installed on the office Server, in order to access the backup (.bak) file you will need to locate this file on your Server computer.
- If you are a one-user and have installed Tourwriter on one PC, that computer is also your Server. You will be able to locate your .bak file on your PC’s C: Drive.
- We recommend that a copy of the backup file is copied across to an external hard drive or USB stick for safe keeping.
If you are required to send a copy of your .bak file to a Tourwriter staff member, please zip/compress the file before emailing it, to reduce the overall file size. You can do this by right clicking the filename and selecting Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder.
