There’s an old saying in computers, your data is only as good as your last backup. There is a little known corollary to that saying; your backups are only as good as your last restore. In this article based on chapter 7 Learn SQL Server in a Month of Lunches, author Grant Fritchey shows how to use log backups in order to get your database to a particular point in time as part of an emergency.

Restoring to a Point in Time (PDF)

This article is excerpted from the upcoming book SQL Server 2008 Administration in Action by Rod Colledge and published by Manning Publications. It addresses the various types of server backups: full backup, differential backup, transaction log backup, and COPY_ONLY backup. For the table of contents, the Author Forum, and other resources, go to http://manning.com/colledge/.

Backup types (PDF)