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How to Set Up Daily Backup With Auto-Date File Names

November 24, 2025
SAP

Here’s what MaxDB actually supports, and how to set up automatic, date‐based backup file names:


What MaxDB Supports for File Naming in Backups


✅ How to Set Up Daily Backup With Auto-Date File Names (Correctly)

  1. Create a Backup Medium (File)
    • In MaxDB Database Studio (or via dbmcli) define a medium:
      • Device/File: e.g. /your/backup/path/DBBACK_#YYYY-#MM-#DD.dat
      • Type: FILE
      • Other properties (block size, overwrite, etc.) as needed.
  2. Create a Backup Template
    • Use this medium in your data backup template.
    • Choose Complete Data Backup or Incremental, depending on needs.
  3. Schedule a Job
    • Set up a job (via Database Studio / your scheduler) to run the backup template daily.
    • Each run will generate a new file name because of the date placeholder (e.g. DBBACK_2025-11-24.dat).

⚠️ Important Notes / Limitations

  • No native “counter” placeholder like % for data backup filenames: MaxDB doesn’t support an auto-incrementing counter for data backups via placeholders. The sequencing (.001, .002) is more for log backups. (maxdb.sap.com)
  • If you need both date + incremental count, you may need to handle this via scripting + dbmcli (e.g. a shell / batch script that checks existing files and sets a filename accordingly when calling backup_template_create).

If you like, I can write a sample shell script (for Linux) or batch script (for Windows) + dbmcli commands to implement daily MaxDB backup with date + incremental numbering — do you want me to do that?