Sage 100

Have a prospect (200) that is looking for information on the file structure of MAS so that they can develop off site backup system if they would go with MAS 200 (PVX). Below is a snippet from an e-mail. ""We need to dig into the app logic and understand how the data is stored / managed/changed"" Does Sage have any white papers on backing up?

With PVX and code driven locking, you don't want to put any backups in operation while people are in the system. If a file is backed up during a posting locked files may not be grabbed. Then the posting continues and now the backup is useless as it gets to the next file. Create a window.

Would the file layouts be of help ? I know they're not on the web for 4.4 but you might share http://infosource.sagesoftwareonline.com/sw_attach/SSO/MAS90/FileLayouts/430/webhelp/filelayouts.htm

It's not the layout that is the issue, but the programming language. Everything runs through a single executable (PVXWIN32.exe) then there is a Process Identifier (PID) that you can tie to a user and potentially to a MAS 90 task. There would be soooooooooo much logic required in the backup program to understand what the tasks running are to know what files need to be backed up when and whether the backup is possible at that moment due to the file locking. We looked into this for server monitoring and potential killing of really bad reports or Alerts on shared servers. Now we just require dedicated servers for Business Alerts or Knowledge synch or other apps that could crush servers because of the way MAS is architected.

I would smack these people upside the head and tell them ""Look the data is stored in data folders, back those up. What's so hard to understand.

At night, when no one is on the system.