Andrew P (5/4/2016)
...Unless you have reason not to trust the specific vendor, and even then I'd probably ask for the backup to review and restore myself.
Well...the grapevine has a rumour that their support is a bit lacking, though I don't see that as a reason in and of itself.
Andrew P (5/4/2016)
You expected them to create a new (empty) database, and then create scripts ... and insert data .... That seems quite a time consuming and unusual approach t.... Remember, the database they're trying to get you to restore isn't a blank slate...
They already have the scripts, etc, for use with other clients that they can't restore for, so no extra work there in that sense. However the purpose behind my question is to gauge if I'm being unreasonable in my concerns or if there are "issues" that might haunt me if we restore.
In my previous lives as a vendor employee we always took the script approach, knowing that our dev/test databases had all manner of garbage from internal use, and our other customers' databases were no-go's. So, do they maintain a "for deployment" database for new customers? Or do they source control scripts?
Thanks for your feedback, it's got me thinking. I might just ask them outright about the history of the database.