Problem

There is a difference between the way the Oracle and the MSSQL maintenance applications are exporting old table partitions and it can make the DB backups useless when using SecureTransport maintenance applications.

Resolution

The Oracle maintenance applications exports the aged partitions logically (doesn't make a physical copy of the partitions/tables) and afterwards drops those partitions. This means that you can import(restore) the logically exported data in the Oracle case to the table almost without complications to the existing database.

The MSSQL maintenance application does the following:

1. Moves the old partitions to the SERVERLOG_ARCHIVE or FILETRACKING_ARCHIVE filegroup.
2. Physically backup the filegroup created in the previous step.
3. Physically backup the log with init option.
4. Drops old partitions.

The difference in the way the maintenance applications are operating is causing the following problems on MSSQL side:

Due to the fact the the old partitions are physically moved you cannot simply restore the backup and to see the data in the SecureTransport Admin UI.

Due to the physical backup of the logs if the MSSQL DB is in recovery model different than simple - this just makes the MSSQL native backup useless when using SecureTransport. However it is difficult to use this SecureTransport functionality in simple recovery model if you want to keep a backup of the MSSQL DB. From another perspective if FULL recovery model is used you actually have better backup solution than the one provided in SecureTransport.

What needs to be done if the MSSQL FULL recovery model is used is to schedule the SecureTransport maintenance applications to drop the old partitions keeping the Enable log export checkbox unchecked.

For more information about the MSSQL Recovery models please refer to the following article: Microsoft SQL Documentation