MySQL Enterprise Backup Team is pleased to announce major improvements in incremental backup performance starting with release 4.1.
Introduction
The current incremental backup algorithm scans all the tables to gather changed pages even if very few tables are modified since the previous backup and thus results in a 'full-scan' incremental backup. This may result in increment backups requiring the same amount of time as full backup because it scans all the tables. The new algorithm aims to eliminate this extra time.
The new algorithm scans only those tables that have been modified since the previous backup. This algorithm relies on modification time, which is similar to an earlier improvement made for full backup. That full backup algorithm is known as optimistic full backup, hence new improvement is named …
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