Posted by Simon Hayes on 09/15/05 18:03

I don't think there's a generic way to tell if a database has changed
or not (assuming that you mean when data in a user table has changed).
You could run a trace which looks for INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE statements,
log the trace in a table, and then check the contents of the table in a
custom backup job, but that doesn't seem very practical.

If your concern is to reduce disk space used for backups, you could use
differential backups for your 'static' databases, and only do the full
backup once a month, or whatever interval is appropriate. But if your
concern is to simplify administration, and given how cheap disks are
relative to a DBA's time, I would consider just adding another disk and
continuing with the same backup job for all databases.

If this isn't helpful, you might want to give some more details about
your environment, especially about how big the databases are, how often
you expect updates, and what you're trying to achieve (eg. save disk
space).

Simon

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