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Software Engineering vocabulary · Databases and Persistence

Backup

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˈbækʌp/nounCore term

In software engineering, backup means: A copy of a database saved at a certain moment so that the data can be brought back after a failure, a mistake or an attack.

In Turkish: yedek, yedekleme

How it is used

You take, run, schedule, verify and restore backups. Common types are full, differential and incremental backups, and physical versus logical backups. Experienced DBAs repeat one rule: a backup you have never test-restored is not a real backup.

Example sentences

  1. We take a full backup every night and keep it for thirty days.

  2. Take a backup of the table before you run the migration.

Common collocations

  • take a backup
  • restore from backup
  • full backup
  • backup schedule
  • verify a backup
  • restoreTo bring a database back from a backup, either to fix data loss or to create a copy of it on another server.
  • point-in-time recoveryRestoring a database to its exact state at a chosen moment, such as one minute before a bad DELETE, by replaying saved change logs on top of a backup.
  • dumpA file that contains a database's structure and data written out as SQL statements or in a special export format, which can be loaded into another database.
  • replicationKeeping copies of the same database on several servers by sending every change from one server to the others, for safety and to share the load.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Databases and Persistence

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