Hi, Mike.

>>In addition to a traditional nightly backup, I also include the ability for my users to create ad-hoc backups within the app using DynaZip, but does it really include files that are open?
>
>Yep. It will even correctly backup files while something like this is running:
>
>Do While .T.
>Insert Into TableBeingBackedUp (dt) values (DateTime())
>EndDo
>
>I haven't gotten any corrupt backups yet.

But while you're zipping table 30, table 20 can still receive transactions, so you end up with an inconsistent (database-wide) backup anyway. A live backup in a decent engine wworks over the transaction log to ensure that what you backed up is a real snapshot of the whole DB at a given moment.

For what I saw, part of what you mentioned is already happening. MySQL (a very popular server these days) is file based.

Is the multi-file vs. db-file+transaction log what you're evaluating as over-rated?

See you,