Recover deleted records?

[david.brent]

Long time no post.

The guy who took over from me has been a bit silly. He was in a 'test' database and deleted some records from a 'test' table.

Problem is, he was in a live database. Instead on admitting it, he's gone off sick and is bricking himself (he's just rang me).

Where do the deleted records go. Do they hide in some hidden table somewhere. I ask this because you never get the space back until you compact it. So maybe just maybe the records may still 'exist' somewhere.

If anyone has had any previous experience of this because he is buggered because he hasn't been backing up the database and the server backup has been done this morning.

I wrote some procedures to recreate the database a long time ago but the structure has changed since then, and I'd have to rewrite it (days of work).

If anyone can help I'd be made up.

Cheers

 

[workmad3]

Don't think deleted records can be recovered

About the only thing I can suggest is that your friend owns up, unless you can get that code to rebuild the db and it works going.

Also, have your friend suggest a tiered backup system for future backups so that you can roll back more than just a single day. My work here has a tape backup system that keeps a weeks worth of backups on seperate tapes, allowing them to go back up to a week if something goes wrong. Admittedly there is then more lost data as you could lose 2, 3 or however many days worth of data, but its better to roll back 2 days than to realise that the mistake happened on the latest backup and the business is now dead.

 

[david.brent]

Thanks for the reply workmad3.

I was afraid that the records were gone for good.

The database in question was something I set up many years ago to store Management Information. I wrote a totally seperate back-up application and in the 3 years I was looking after it, I never lost a record I couldn't get back.

Unfortunately, the guy who took over my job decided to normalise the database (it's a data warehouse) as he'd been on a course. I think he tried to take it to 3rd normal form but didn't quite get there. As a result the spreadsheets and reports the data is used to produce take a lot longer. This also meant my backup application couldn't do it's job anymore. He also 'learned' on the course that data warehouses didn't need backing up so decided to have it excluded from any back-up strategy, even the server backup (wtf).

I have been keeping copies of all the text input files which I produce from the mainframe (I'm a DBA now and parnoid about losing any data). I can use my old software to restore the database to my original design but it would take me a while to re-write it to reflect the database structure that's in place now.

As there are reports due out tomorrow, I have decided to create a new database using the textfiles. This will be to my original design. I will stop my involvement there.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

 

[workmad3]

No problem

Also if you have the time, point out to your friend that data warehouses generally don't need backing up because usually they ARE the backups dumped into one big storage archive... if its the main DB for the system, then even being a data warehouse doesn't stop the need for backups.... just something they may not have covered on the course but is generally fairly intuitively obvious

 

[david.brent]

Thanks again Workmad3.

He's back in work and no-ones the wiser. He's decided to leave the database as I recreated it. This makes life easier for everyone. He's going to do a back-up every week. This is OK by me because it won't take long to restore (upto 7 days only could be lost).

He told me to pass on his thanks for your time and your wise words.

I can now get back to the job I'm paid to do.

Cheers