Hey Guys,
Just wanted to get some ideas on what would be the best way to go about backing up and restoring part of my entity model. We basically have an entity model of our database, and would like to give the user the opportunity to backup sections of the database. Some things that have to be considered are as follows:
All tables have multiple foreign keys, but we only want to export the data that the user has selected. Soe we will have to break constraints when exporting, and re-establish constraints when importing.
Backwards and forwards compatibility. If the data that was backed is from another table structure that has not changed between multiple revisions, we want to be able to import that data eventhough other tables have changed
How much code do we have to add to get this going.
Right now we are toying with two ideas, serialization of entity objects and manual backup and restore through comparison. I like the serialization, but the problem is that both versions, the backup database and restore database have to be the same version. The other way seems a bit tiresome.
Hopefully you guys can come up with some other ideas, but if it comes down to it, I think I may use the serialization.