Question

I have developed a windows application with vs2010 and c#. I would like to know a way to backup and restore my local mdf database programmatically. With sdf database I use File Copy but it doesn’t seem to work with mdf files.
Can anyone help?

Answer 1

Try in this way:

• Go to Sql Management Studio and select the database you want to
  backup
• Right click and select ‘Tasks’ -> ‘Backup’
• Adjust the parameters as you like, but don’t confirm the dialog
• Press the button SCRIPT and dismiss the dialog

• On the query window insert the following text before the backup
  command

  CREATE PROCEDURE DO_BACKUP  
  AS  
  BEGIN  
     -- HERE GOES THE BACKUP TEXT CREATED BY THE SCRIPT BUTTON   
     -- FOR EXAMPLE
     BACKUP DATABASE [Customers] 
     TO DISK = N'E:\backups\customers.bak' 
     WITH NOFORMAT, NOINIT,  
     NAME = N'Customers - Full Database Backup', 
     SKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD,  STATS = 10
  END  
  

and execute (selecting the correct database) using the exclamation mark button.

Now you have a stored procedure called DO_BACKUP that you can call from your code using the normal ADO.NET objects like SqlConnection and SqlCommand