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Sage Pastel Evolution is an Accounting / Stock / Point of Sale program for medium to large sized companies. The program can support a large number of concurrent users and an unlimited number of companies. It uses Microsoft SQL Server as its underlying database. Small setups (up to 10 users) can use Microsoft SQL Server Express with larger shops necessitating the use of the standard edition of SQL Server.

In order to backup Sage Pastel Evolution one needs to backup the Microsoft SQL Server database as well as the appropriate registry entries. In this article I will not discuss how to backup Microsoft SQL Server Express or Standard edition—email me on chribonn@gmail.com if you are interested in a write-up on how to backup these products.

The Windows Registry

A word of warning about handling the registry: unlike many programs, the registry program does not have an undo or an undelete option and changes go into effect immediately. If you delete a file by mistake you can pull it out of limbo by visiting the Recycle Bin. If you screw up a document, pressing undo will take you back one action at a time until you reach the stage before the oops or, if necessary, you can abandon all changes done during that session simply by not saving the updated document. None of this exists in the registry so be cautious.  Read more »

Given the widespread success of virtualization, many SMBs rely exclusively on the inbuilt features as their main data protection plan and which may appear adequate at face value! One would need to see the overall picture! Virtual server based tools such as, snapshots and export/import utilities that are found in the major products, help organizations protect their data to a certain degree! It is not enough to backup data, being a clone or a file to the same virtual server. In fact, major manufacturers and their fellow partners provide a vast range of backup solutions that fulfill all requirements of a proper backup policy. With SMBs, the deciding factor may be costs! Do they have the budget to purchase such applications? However, for the unlucky IT techies that never manage to get their superiors buying these expensive products can still develop a similar mechanism. Using some basic scripting and inexpensive hardware they can build backup solutions similar to these expensive applications as they too, make use of the inbuilt or native tools found in the major virtualization products.

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The native backup utility found on Windows servers is one cool application that has saved many SMBs real cash!  Apart from fulfilling its main functionality, it is found to be very reliable and effective. Problems arise when extra features are required such as, backing up to external storage devices and/or utilizing advanced backup features! One useful feature that is standard in purchasable applications is email notification of backup jobs. The script below gives you that functionality!!!! It’s free and simple to implement!!!!

The implementation steps of the script are as follows:

1. Create a backup job using Windows backup – Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Backup and set a job schedule
2. Open the window Scheduled Tasks – Start/Control Panel/Scheduled Tasks and find the newly created scheduled job.
3. From the properties window of this job copy the highlighted text from the Run text field
4. Copy this text in a new batch file called ‘mybackup.bat’ (any name you like without quotes)
5. Take a note of the batch file location and enter the full path in the Run text field of step 3 ex: c:\documents\mybackup.bat
6. Close the properties window by clicking OK and enter an admin password if prompted
7. Add the sample script shown below in the batch file after the text entered in step 4
8. Edit the script text to reflect your email & path settings

Sample script

Copied text from step 3 goes here

@echo off
set Sender=”source email addess”
set Receiver=”your email address”
set Host=”IP address of source email server”
set Subject=”Backup name/title”

set logdir=”%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\data”
REM ex – C:\Documents and Settings\administrator\ for %USERPROFILE%
set result=”%temp%\latestlog.txt”

pushd %logdir%
for /f “tokens=1 delims=” %%I in (‘dir /B /O-D’) do (
 if “%%~xI”==”.log” (
   type “%%~fI” > %result%
   goto :end
   )
 )
:end
popd

c:\windows\system32\blat.exe %result% -f %Sender% -to %Receiver% -server %Host% -subject %Subject%
del /q /f “%result%”

 

Explanation of the sample script:

 pushd
==> stores the current directory for use by the POPD command, then change to the specified directory

for /f “tokens=1 delims=” %%I in (‘dir /B /O-D’) do
=> parse each line of the directory listing (log files) and get the name of each file one by one

dir /B /O-D  ==> remove heading info from directory list, and list files by date in reverse order

until
if “%%~xI”==”.log”
==>if the current file (its extension only) is .log

then
type “%%~fI” > %result%
==> then copy the contents of the current log file to the variable file latestlog.txt

c:\windows\system32\blat.exe  ==> Blat is a Win32 command line utility that sends eMail using SMTP – http://www.blat.net/?docs/credits.html