Deployment options: IBM Netezza ApplianceIBM Netezza Appliance
Incremental backups are
database backups that save only the data that changed since the last backup. Because the system
copies a small subset of the data, incremental backups require less time to complete than full
backups. Use incremental backups to keep your backups current and reduce the frequency of
time-consuming full backups.
There are two types of incremental backups:
Differential
Includes all the changes that are made to the database since the previous backup (full,
differential, or cumulative).
Cumulative
Includes all the changes that are made to the database since the last full backup. Cumulative
backups incorporate and replace any differential backups that were run since the last full backup.
Use cumulative backups to consolidate differential backups so that if you must restore data, the
restoration requires fewer steps and less media.
The following figure shows sample backups, beginning with a full
backup (shown as the letter A), then a series of differential (C)
and cumulative (B) backups.Figure 1. Database
backups timeline
The backups in the previous figure comprise a backup set, which
is a collection of backups that are written to a single location that
consists of one full backup and any number of incremental backups.
