The annual backup is generally viewed as a full backup of the system that can be restored in the event of an emergency. The most common use of the annual backup is for auditing purposes. These audits can occur several years after the backup is taken, so it is very important to be able to restore the system to its condition at the time of that backup. In the United States, it is possible for the Internal Revenue Service to audit your company as far back as seven years. How likely is it that you will be on the same hardware seven years from now? You might be on compatible hardware, but most likely you will be on different hardware with a different operating system. Consequently, it is important to plan thoroughly for such an eventuality.
One way to guarantee platform independence is to dump your important data to ASCII and back it up on a reliable, common, and durable backup medium. Some people prefer optical storage over tapes for these reasons. Also, do not overlook the application code and the supporting software such as the version of OpenEdge being used at the time of backup. If you are not going to dump to ASCII, you must obtain a complete image of the system. If you take a complete image and are audited, you must find compatible hardware to do the restoration. It is also important to use relative pathnames on the backup to give you greater flexibility during the restoration. Finally, you must document the backup as thoroughly as possible, and include that information with the media when sending the backup to your archive site.
