Db2 APIs for backup and restore to storage managers

Db2 provides an interface that can be used by third-party media management products to store and retrieve data for backup and restore operations and log files. This interface is designed to augment the backup, restore, and log archiving data targets of diskette, disk, tape, and Tivoli® Storage Manager, that are supported as a standard part of Db2.

These third-party media management products will be referred to as vendor products in the remainder of this section.

Db2 defines a set of API prototypes that provide a general purpose data interface to backup, restore, and log archiving that can be used by many vendors. These APIs are to be provided by the vendor in a shared library on UNIX based systems, or DLL on the Windows operating system. When the APIs are invoked by Db2, the shared library or DLL specified by the calling backup, restore, or log archiving routine is loaded and the APIs provided by the vendor are called to perform the required tasks.

Sample files demonstrating the Db2 vendor functionality are located on UNIX platforms in the sqllib/samples/BARVendor directory, and on Windows in the sqllib\samples\BARVendor directory.

The following are the definitions for terminology used in the descriptions of the backup and restore vendor storage plug-in APIs.

Backup and restore vendor storage plug-in: A dynamically loadable library that Db2 will load to access user-written backup and restore APIs for vendor products.
Input: Indicates that Db2 will enter in the value for the backup and restore vendor storage plug-in API parameter.
Output: Indicates that the backup and restore vendor storage plug-in API will enter in the value for the API parameter.