Toreador (9/22/2010)

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...I'm not sure what the question was supposed to teach us though - would anybody really try doing a backup inside a transaction?!

Dave62 (9/22/2010)

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I think the proper way to "rollback" a backup is to do a restore.

cengland0 (9/22/2010)

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No, because that will bring the database back to a previous state. The way to rollback the backup would be to delete the file that was created.

Dave62 (9/22/2010)

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This may be one of those "it depends" things. In my way of thinking, when you rollback a transaction, returning it to the previous state (before the transaction began) is the desired outcome. So restoring the database after a backup is like rolling back a transaction. They both return the database to the state prior to the respective action.

Carlo Romagnano (9/22/2010)

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Some operations have no sense inside a transaction. I surprise to see so many wrong answers.

sknox (9/22/2010)

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... --other data changes (e.g, by other users) are not rolled back. In this case, the items related to a backup are the backup file itself, and the metadata stored about the backup by SQL server. So "rolling back" a backup would be deleting the backup file and the metadata but leaving any changes to the database intact.

Dave62 (9/22/2010)

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Agreed. This is the best way to deal with the live scenario. But would utterly fail in the maintenance scenario. If you actually want to get back to the state prior to the backup operation deleting the backup file is not going to work out too well.

sknox (9/22/2010)

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Agreed agreed. And at this point, we've taken what was essentially a cute joke on your part and utterly destroyed it. Apologies for our pedantry.