Mainframe, MVS and zOS Discussion

Hi,

What is "incremental" in DB2? For example, I have seen usage like "incremental" IMAGE Copy? Is it like it's applicable to only a specific task or this is used in a generalized way? But in any case what exactly it means?

An incremental copy just copies the things which have changed since the last incremental copy. Somewhere at the back there will be a full copy. The incremental copies means that you have a "state" at various points. To rebuild completely, you have to go to the base full copy, then apply each incremental copy.

There will often be a combination of copy policies, to satisfy different requirements through flexibility.

The term is a common one when discussing back ups. Full back ups allow restoration of the entire data base (or system, depending upon what is being backed up), but take longer. An incremental back up requires the full back up base and all incremental back ups from the base to be available, and hence can require more storage (or tapes) overall, but the incremental back up will usually be smaller and hence run faster -- possibly quite a bit faster.

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledge ... opies.html

A very good link to start...

If you need to know incremental image copy

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledge ... ml?lang=en

Merge copy is used to copy incremental copy with full image copy to make a new full image copy