Backing up your Journyx data on a regular basis is an essential practice for data security and disaster recovery.

Journyx offers its own utility to back up data from your database, converting it into a file that can be readily restored on another Journyx server or used by Journyx Support to investigate any problems that you might encounter. It is also advisable to make regular backups of your database using a native backup routine. This enables faster archiving and restoring of database data on the same system. Consult your local IT professional or database administrator for information on native backups.

Using the backup utility will take Journyx OFFLINE! You should NOT use your database's backup utility (if possible). Having a current backup using Timesheet's backupdb utility is the fastest way to recover from hardware/software failures.

For Windows
1) On any supported Windows product, navigate to a Journyx Command Line Prompt from the Start menu. To access the Journyx command line prompt, click Start > Programs > Journyx  > Journyx Command Line Prompt. (The physical address of the command line is C:\Program Files\Journyx\jwt\bin\jxcmd.bat if you left Journyx in its default directory upon installation.)

Once you have opened the command prompt, you will be placed in the \jwt\bin directory.

2) Now run the backup command. You must run the backup database command from the BIN directory.

At the prompt, type:
backupdb

Typing backupdb without any parameters will bring up usage notes for the utility, including available options and necessary parameters. Read them over and figure out which one(s) apply to your situation. We recommend (-v) & (-x). (-v) without the parentheses, indicates verbose output, meaning that it displays all machine commands as the server backs up your data. The (-x) parameter (again, without the parentheses) automatically overwrites existing backup files.

3) When specifying a backup file location other than the current drive and directory, you must enter the full path. Otherwise, you can use a relative path to indicate the destination directory for your backup. Your database backup command might look something like this:
C:\Program Files\Journyx\jwt\bin > backupdb -v -x "..\..\Journyx\backupfile.jx" (where C:\Program Files\Journyx\jwt\bin is the prompt, and chevron '>' is the cursor)

This will create a backup file called 'backupfile.jx' in your c:\Program Files\Journyx directory. The backup process can take from several minutes to an hour, depending on how much data you have stored in the product. When you are backing up a database, Timesheet sets a database_busy flag in the config file, telling the application not to let anyone modify it. By proxy this takes the application offline; users will be unable to enter the application during this period.

UPDATE: It has been brought to our attention that in versions of Journyx prior to 7.7, there may be problems with backupdb being able to successfully compress (.zip-> .jx) backup data when there are embedded spaces in the path to the .jx file. The result is that the backup occurs successfully, but the .jx file will end up being a 1kb file (empty) in the path specified. Due to this problem and the space in the example listed above, a compressed backup file "program.zip" will end up in the root directory of your C: partition, or perhaps in the "c:\program files" directory. This problem only appears to affect Windows based servers, and not unix/linux servers.

Before relying on any database copies, take these necessary steps: (optional, especially if you've been performing Journyx backups using these steps.)

1) Backup your database
2) Install the SAME VERSION of Journyx on a different server, typically a testing, non-production server.
3) Restore that backed up database into the clean Journyx installation on the non-production server.

This is the preferred way of verifying that your database backup was successful. We stand behind our backup utility, but data is irreplaceable once it is lost. Take precautionary steps not only with our product but with all of your products that handle such sensitive data. If you need a license key for a test server, we will provide you with one. Contact your Journyx sales representative for a temporary license key to test with. (800-755-9878).