Reading files while the backup is running

[Guest.Visitor]

Hi, We are building a Web application and have to get access to the AS/400 database files 24 hours/day and our customer are not ready to pay the expensive cost for hardware mirroring. Software mirroring, journaling and save while active is not any option either, because of that the files have a lot of member handling. The connection to the database will be done with ODBC or JDBC. When the backup is running the object will be in lock status *SHRNUP. The read operation put the object in lock status *SHRRD. This two status should not make any conflict to each other. I've made some attempts to read files while the backup is running and it went well. Do anybody have any apprehension of doing this read operation while the backup is running? It have always be an unwritten law that the backup shall operate alone and that is why I ask before we start to development. TIA / Leif

[Guest.Visitor]

<font color =blue>We are building a Web application and have to get access to the AS/400 database files 24 hours/day and our customer are not ready to pay the expensive cost for hardware mirroring. Software mirroring, journaling and save while active is not any option either, because of that the files have a lot of member handling. The connection to the database will be done with ODBC or JDBC.</font> I don't see how you could claim to run 24 hours using this strategy. If you have some sort of error (e.g. application), then won't you need to restore files ? If you need to restore files then you will need to bring the application down, unless you get into some fairly complicated manual processing.(restore to another library, manual patch etc...). If you really are planning on seriously 24x7 then you should look at journalling and commitment control. I also dont understand why you couldn't use save while active. What is the relationship or issues between member handling and save while active ? David

[Guest.Visitor]

Hi again, Yes David, you are right about the 24 hour/day problem in case of restore of on or more files. In that case we have to put down our application. It is the same when managing the AS/400 system. Why we not will use SAVACT and journaling, it is because of that we have large files with members that are deleted/created/reorg/cleared all of the time. We have made a test of restoring journals to our files and the time to do this was estimated to > 3 days. This is because of the stop in the journals. This is why our customer not can use journaling. We are just interested in reading files under normal backup routines and of course at normal day time. TIA / Leif