Backup and Restore Database using VB6

One issue on creating a system is the database, when your database goes down and it crushes what are the solutions that your system might do, this would be the basis of measuring the reliability of a system, when a database goes down is there any way to recover its content partially, or is there any way to make a copy of the database on a separate drive of location on your computer?

There are solutions that we may do first is to create a function on our system to create a copy of the database or also we call this as backup and when the database crushes you may restore its database, take note that if you will restore a database you cannot restore all of the content from the original one because the records that we may restore are the data which had been saved at the moment that we backup our database.

This feature is a matter of Copying a File to another Location

Let me define first some codes before we start

FileCopy Source,Destination

Source where is our database located usually on our default folder, and destination is where we want to put our Backup, Note that FileCopy is a built in function on vb6 that enable you to copy a file

App.path

                Gets the specific  Location of our project

New controls to be used

                CommonDialog-  can be used to browse for a specific location it’s like the save as and open on Microsoft Word

Now let’s do some design

1.       Just create a Form Containing two button first button would have a caption “Backup” and the second Button is “Restore”

2.       Add some components press ctrl+t then check this component 

3.       Then add this control on your Form located on the Tool box

Now let’s do the coding

                I let the name of the controls to its default name, on button backup put this line of codes

1.       Me.CommonDialog1.Filter = "*.mdb"

This line code just declare that you can only save the file as .mdb

2.       Me.CommonDialog1.ShowSave

IT shows the dialog box to located where do you want to save the file and what would be the name of the file to be backup

3.       If Me.CommonDialog1.FileName <> "" Then

Checks whether open button is clicked

4.       FileCopy App.Path & "\\Data\\db_SADStore.mdb", Me.CommonDialog1.FileName & ".mdb"

A code to copy the file on another location the source is on the data folder on my project meaning the structure of my  project is Default Folder>> Data>> db_SADStore.mdb

5.       MsgBox "Database had been successfully Saved on " & Me.CommonDialog1.FileName & ".mdb"

It just inform the user that the file is saved on  that specific location

6.       End if

End of the code

                Take note that if you are dealing with  an error Access Denied there are some reasons first is to close your  ms access file it might be open, second is you need to close the connection on your code you might want to close it use the ConnectionName.Close then open it after doing a backup and lastly you must run your vb6 as administrator.

                Now Backup is done it’s up for you to do the restore function it’s just the reverse On FileCopy just make the destination be the source and the Source would be the destination. But take note remove the “.mdb” on the destination on backup and change Me.CommonDialog1.ShowSave to Me.CommonDialog1.ShowOpen

Think Logically hahah. J

Main form

Dialog appears when Backup button is clicked

Dialog show the path of the backup file

Happy Coding