BACKUP keyword

Creates a backup for one, several, or all database tables.

Syntax

Backup directory

Backing up a database or tables requires a backup directory which is set using the cairo.sql.backup.root configuration key in a server.conf file:

server.conf

cairo.sql.backup.root=/Users/UserName/Desktop

The backup directory can be on a disk local to the server, a remote disk or a remote filesystem. QuestDB will enforce that the backup is only written in a location relative to the backup directory. This is a security feature to disallow random file access by QuestDB.

The tables will be written in a directory with today's date with the default format yyyy-MM-dd (e.g., 2020-04-20). A custom date format can be specified using the cairo.sql.backup.dir.datetime.format configuration key:

server.conf

cairo.sql.backup.dir.datetime.format=yyyy-dd-MM

Given a BACKUP query run on 2021-02-25, the data and metadata files will be written following the db directory structure

/path/to/backup_directory

├── 2021-02-25

│   ├── table1

│   │   ├── ...

│   ├── table2

│   │   ├── ...

│   ├── table3

│   ...

If a user performs several backups on the same date, each backup will be written a new directory. Subsequent backups on the same date will look as follows:

/path/to/backup_directory

├── 2021-02-22 'first'

├── 2021-02-22.1 'second'

├── 2021-02-22.2 'third'

├── 2021-02-24 'first new date'

├── 2021-02-24.1 'first new date'

│   ...

Examples

Single table

BACKUP TABLE table1;

Multiple tables

BACKUP TABLE table1, table2, table3;

All tables

BACKUP DATABASE;