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  Undoubtedly, you have a backup and disaster-recovery system in place and operating for your enterprise data systems. And you know that vendor-provided backup solutions for database management systems (DBMSes) typically have been cumbersome and second-rate network citizens. It's also very likely

Well, what many of you may not have realized is that a few of the backup system vendors also offer DBMS clients to simplify integration of your database backup into a comprehensive client/server solution.

To view the Report card.
We compared these database backup clients, often called agents, in our University of Wisconsin lab in Madison to determine the advantages each has to offer. We gathered agents from Cheyenne Software, Seagate Software and Legato Systems that support a variety of databases and workgroup servers--from Oracle Corp.'s Oracle7 Server to Lotus Development Corp.'s Lotus Notes. We also found agents from IBM's ADSM and DataTools, but IBM's agents weren't ready for testing, and DataTools didn't meet our specific test platform requirements. The results we found with the products we tested were interesting and not what we expected.

A Patchwork of Support Although we picked Cheyenne's agents as the all-around best solution and Editor's Choice, we determined that there is no clear winner among the products we tested. Even though we found each to be a good complement to most storage manageme nt plans, two factors make it difficult to recommend one specific backup agent from this set.

First, we were amazed at the very limited cros s-platform support among any given vendor's solution. Cheyenne, for example, has Oracle agents for both Windows NT and Unix systems, yet the Oracle agent for NT can't back up to the Unix server, and the Oracle agent for Unix can't back up to the NT server. (Cheyenne's marketing representative claims it is possible for the NT agent to back up to the Unix server, but the company provides no documentation on how to accomplish this and suggests you purchase Cheyenne's consulting services if you want to try.) Only Legato has an Oracle agent that could direct backups to any of its server platforms, but Legato only supports Oracle on Unix. In the end, it's likely your existing DBMS or backup system will restrict you to a single vendor solution, in which case you won't have much of a choice.

Second, database backup agents add value only by letting you include database file s along with your file-and-print-based backup system. They're not a good solution for only backing up databases (unless, perhaps, you have a large distributed installation). We expected database backup agents to provide more control over the database for enhanced backup flexibility. This was not the case. For example, we'd like to see a backup server be able to archive redo logs directly onto tape from the DBMS. Some DBMSes already do this locally.

Without these capabilities, there wasn't much to distinguish one product from the other. The products all performed as advertised, and there weren't any performance or operational surprises. Pick the database agent that best fits your DBMS and backup server environment. Also keep in mind this comparative review takes into account only the capabilities of the specific database backup agents. You should review the merits of each core backup server before making a purchase. We last reviewed these products in our March 1, 1996, issue (page 56), and we'll take a look again later this quarter.