A common practice in many firms is to take copies of data in CA Datacom databases for archival purposes. There are many ways to accomplish this, and while we would recommend that customers use the CA Datacom/DB utility program called DBUTLTY to take this backup, other programs like ADRDSSU (DFDSS) or FDR are often used.
This presents a challenge for customers who have made significant changes to the database structure since the backup was taken, as restoring these backup files will result in a mismatch between the data and the definition.
The best way to view this situation is not that you will restore the data back into the same database from which it came - because the data definition is now different - but to look at this old data as an external data store - like data being imported into CA Datacom/DB databases from another DBMS, or being provided from an outside source. This will allow you to keep your current data and definitions intact and still access this old data.
To do this, you will need to do the following:
The main task for this project is to identify the correct data structure in use at the time of the backup. If the above does not work other options would be:
In order to avoid this problem in the future, one process we would recommend is to:
As always, please contact CA Technologies support for CA Datacom if you have further questions.
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