svanderclock wrote:
what is better:
gfix -sweep ... gbak ...
or:
gbak ... gfix -sweep ...
because actually i do the second one and i notice that the GBAK is very slooow (more than 12 hours to backup a database, and this everydays)?
Ann W. Harrison answers:
Is the sweep slow when done first?
It's really six of one, half dozen of the other. In both cases sweep and gbak each read every record in every table. If you sweep first, the sweep bears the cost of removing record versions and index entries, but the cost is the same, which ever tool does it.
In fact, the best combination might be gbak -g followed by a sweep. That would make the oldest interesting higher than doing the sweep before the backup. I think (but am not certain) that with the -g switch, Firebird won't look beyond the record version the gbak transaction can read. Without the -g, Firebird will look at the record chain to see if there are any unneeded old versions, after it's found the version appropriate for the current transaction. So, for example, if you start a long transaction, modify some records, run sweep, then run gbak without the -g, Firebird is going to explore some old record version chains that are being kept alive by the very old transaction.
That's a small difference - looking at some old versions or not - and you probably won't be able to measure it.
So here's my suggestion... gbak -g followed by gfix -sweep.
On the other hand, a 12 hour backup is pretty bad. What version of Firebird do you run? Have you run a gstat with the -r switch (combine -a and -r, I think) before the backup to see where the garbage is collecting?