USE master
GO

–FULL DATABASE BACKUP on Sunday
BACKUP DATABASE AdventureWorks
TO DISK = ‘D:AdventureWorks_FULL.BAK’
WITH INIT, FORMAT, STATS=10
GO

USE master
GO

–FULL DATABASE BACKUP ON Wednesday CREATED BY YOUR DEVELOPERS
BACKUP DATABASE AdventureWorks
TO DISK = ‘D:AdventureWorksD.BAK’
WITH INIT, FORMAT, STATS=10
GO

USE master
GO

–DIFFERENTIAL DATABASE BACKUP AFTER THE LAST FULL BACKUP
BACKUP DATABASE AdventureWorks
TO DISK = ‘D:AdventureWorks_DIFF.BAK’
WITH DIFFERENTIAL, INIT, FORMAT, STATS=10
GO

If you’re the DBA, you might be thinking that you still have your backup sequence intact and this is what you might have done should you need to restore

–RESTORE SEQUENCE STARTS
RESTORE DATABASE AdventureWorks
FROM DISK = ‘D:AdventureWorks_FULL.BAK’
WITH REPLACE, NORECOVERY, STATS=10
GO

–FAIL DUE TO INCONSISTENT RESTORE SEQUENCE
RESTORE DATABASE AdventureWorks
FROM DISK = ‘D:AdventureWorks_DIFF.BAK’
WITH REPLACE, NORECOVERY, STATS=10
GO

Now, there are a couple of ways to solve this problem. One is to create a trigger on your MSDB database to trap events written on your backupset system table and check for the type column for D values. At least you get to be notified for any FULL database backups outside of your normal backup process. In SQL Server 2005, it’s as easy as using the COPY_ONLY option in the BACKUP command. This specifies that the backup is a copy-only backup, which does not affect the normal sequence of backups. Make sure that your operational DBAs and developers who work on SQL Server 2005 know how to use this option whenever thay run ad-hoc backups. Here’s how to use the COPY_ONLY clause on your BACKUP commands (with emphasis on COPY_ONLY)

–FULL DATABASE BACKUP on Wednesday
BACKUP DATABASE AdventureWorks
TO DISK = ‘D:AdventureWorksD.BAK’
WITH INIT, FORMAT, STATS=10, COPY_ONLY
GO