How To Quickly Backup HSQLDB Database…

HSQLDB is a high performance RDBMS written in pure Java. It can be used as a in-memory database or regular file based database. It can also create a read-only database out of any CSV files. HSQLDB is the database used with OpenOffice. The steps to quickly and safely backup HSQLDB Database are:

1. Run the SQL command CHECKPOINT on the database before taking a backup.
2. Then backup the following files only: dbname.script, dbname.backup, dbname.properties and dbname.log. You do not need to backup dbname.data as it can be reconstructed automatically from dbname.backup.

Note: dbname should be replaced with the actual name of your database

You can also use “shutdown compact” to compact & shutdown the database before a backup if that is feasible.

You can use any standard compression programs like gzip, zip or bzip2. “bzip2 -9″ should be used for maximum compression.

The backup file will not compress much as it is already compressed.

HSQLDB creates memory tables by default unless the tables are explicitly marked as cached while creation. Contents of memory tables are stored in the script file which is highly compressible.