Backup SQL Server via C#

Question

How easy is it to backup a SQL Server database via C# code?

I see lots of related questions, but no real answers.

Answer 1

SQL Management Objects - Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo

It has the methods you need to complete that action.

Answer 2

Should be quite easy providing you have the right permissions.

2 ways that come to mind, there's the already mentioned SQL Management objects, I found a nice project that makes use of these here

You can always just throw a T-SQL backup command at the server through the ADO.Net objects too. Msdn reference to the main command you'll need here

Answer 3

See using SMO Library from c#

on how to use SMO library from c# to perform adminstrator tasks such backup and restor.

Answer 4

Or: Generate your backup script in Management Studio, put it in a stored procedure, run procedure from C# code.

CREATE PROCEDURE sp_backup
AS
BEGIN
    BACKUP DATABASE [YourDatabase] TO  DISK = N'C:\YourPathAndFile.bak' 
    WITH NOFORMAT, NOINIT,  
    NAME = N'Full Database Backup', SKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD,  STATS = 10
END
GO

Answer 5

Here is a script to put database backup content into a stream (as a "select" result), that can be useful to create backup programmaticaly WITHOUT any shared folder. The only thing you needs is the connection to a server. Tested for MSSQL 2008 R2.

-- переменные
DECLARE @dbName nvarchar(MAX);
SET @dbName = N'AdventureWorks';

DECLARE @backupFileName nvarchar(MAX);
SET @backupFileName = N'C:\Temp\' + @dbName + N'.bak';
--EXECUTE (N'PRINT N''Создание бэкапа '+ @backupFileName + '''')
-- создание временной папки
EXEC xp_cmdshell N'mkdir C:\Temp', no_output;
-- бэкап с перетиранием имеющегося файла
DECLARE @sqlScript nvarchar(MAX);
SET @sqlScript = N'BACKUP DATABASE ['
    + @dbName
    + '] TO  DISK = N'''
    + @backupFileName
    + ''' WITH NOFORMAT, INIT, NAME = N'''
    + @dbName
    + '-Full Database Backup'', SKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD, STATS = 10';
--SELECT @sqlScript AS backupScript
EXECUTE (@sqlScript);
-- похоже, файл в 3ГБ можно вычитать... но памяти на это уходит ОЧЕНЬ МНОГО
-- вычитывание файла
SET @sqlScript = N'
SELECT N''' + @backupFileName + ''' AS [backupFileName], BulkColumn AS [backupContent]
FROM OPENROWSET (BULK ''' + @backupFileName + ''', SINGLE_BLOB) MyFile';
--SELECT @sqlScript AS openRowsetScript
EXECUTE (@sqlScript);
-- удаление файла
SET @sqlScript = N'EXEC xp_cmdshell ''del "' + @backupFileName + '"'', no_output';
EXECUTE (@sqlScript);

The result is like follows:

    backupFileName  backupContent
C:\Temp\AdventureWorks.bak  0x54415045000003008C000E01000000000000000000000000000...

Answer 6

If you want to work with the stream of bytes in C#, for instance compressing the stream before writing to disk, you're welcome to look at the code from my project, SQL Server Compressed Backup. It has a small VDI (the SQL Server virtual device API) DLL wrapper written in C++ faithfully exposing each VDI option to .Net, and the rest (the bulk) of the code is written in C#.