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Drag and Drop Procedures for Fastback Plus for OS/2   DRAGDROP.TXT   6/2/95
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NOTE: "Fastback Plus for OS/2" will simply be abbreviated to "FB/2"
      to increase the readability of this document.

Sections:

1       OVERVIEW OF OS/2 AND FB/2 OBJECT MODELS
2       BACKING UP USING DRAG AND DROP
3       RESTORING/COMPARING USING DRAG AND DROP

1.0 OVERVIEW OF OS/2'S AND FB/2'S OBJECT MODELS
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        OS/2's object-oriented paradigm provides an intuitive environment
for it's users.  FB/2 uses this model heavily to increase productivity by
intuitively protecting your data investment.  Drag-and-Drop (also known
as "DND") operations lend themselves to increasing the speed and convenience
to which you commence backups and restores.  If you want to backup a certain
folder, you can just drag that folder on to the Fastback Plus device object
that you wish to target.  If you want to do a restore, you can drag a data
segment onto a target folder.  These operations will be discussed in detail,
and after a few uses we believe you will prefer to use the DND method of
starting your operations.

1.1 FB/2 OBJECTS PERTINENT TO BACKUP AND RESTORES USING DND
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DEVICE OBJECTS: These are the objects in your Fastback Plus folder that
represent different data storage devices on your system.  You may see
Floppy objects, QIC objects, SCSI objects, or System Device objects.
It is acceptable (and a commonly used practice) to have multiple instances
of these device objects to represent different default settings or media type
parameters;  all that is required is to give each separate device object a
unique name.  You may store these objects wherever is most convenient for
you.

FASTBACK PROCEDURE OBJECTS: Think of these as a storage of backup settings;
When these objects are opened Fastack Plus will bring up the Chooser View by
default.  Here you can set such things as which files to backup, default
backup to device, error correction, compression, etc.  You can also have
many instances of these type of objects, renaming them and moving them
to wherever you prefer.

FASTBACK HISTORY OBJECTS: Located (by default) in the Fastback Plus \history
folder, these objects represent information that IS used by FB/2 to determine
where the files are located on the target media.  If one opens the history
file, he will be presented with a chooser view of the files that were backed
up.                                                                     

1.2 OS/2 OBJECTS THAT ARE PERTINENT TO BACKUPS AND RESTORES
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OS/2 FOLDER OBJECTS:  Folders represent physical directories in OS/2.
These folders contain objects such as files and other folders
(subdirectories).

OS/2 DRIVE OBJECTS: Drive objects are created for each logical drive you
have in your system.  A logical drive is any assigned drive letter (eg:
network drives, cd-rom drives, and removables).

2.0 USING DRAG AND DROP TO PREFORM A BACKUP
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        Starting backups in FB/2 can be achieved by different methods.  Since
the ways of starting a backup and restore are independent of the actual stored
data, using a different method to restore data than the method used to backup
the data will cause no problems.

        Many people are comfortable with using the menu systems provided
with FB/2 (via the Fastback Plus Object) due to the similarity to the DOS and
Windows versions.  DND provides some exciting new possibilites that DOS and
Windows (due to their baseline architecture) are unable to do.

        There are two ways to start a backup operation via DND:

i)  One way is to select a folder (or drive object) and drop it on the target
backup device object.  If you wish to select more than one folder or
drive, hold down the <CTRL> key while clicking on your additional selections,
then drag this group to the target device.  FB/2 will immediately launch
the Backup Progress screen with the dragged objects selected for backup.
At this point you can edit the comment, do an estimate, or simply start the
backup.  The backup settings will be determined by the target device's
default backup settings page (SETTINGS | BACKUP of the device object.)

ii) Another way to use DND to quickly start a backup is to drag a FB/2
Procedure object and drop it onto a device object.  Again, FB/2 will
immediately launch the Backup Progress screen as above.  The only difference
is that the settings used during backup (including which files to backup) are
the ones that were set in the FB/2 Procedure, which override the settings that
are in the device object's backup settings page.

NOTES:  If the Procedure object's settings don't make sense for a
particular target device, the default setting for the target device is
used.  For instance:  If you have write verify ON in the Procedure
object and drop it onto a tape device object, write verify will be turned OFF
since write verify is not a valid option for a tape device.  Another
example:  If you have error correction selected in the Procedure Object
and drop it on a System Device Object, the error correction code (ECC)
will not be used since error correction is an invalid choice for System
Device targets.
        Compression has a dynamic choice called "device default" that
will use the default setting as stated in the SETTINGS | BACKUP | COMPRESSION
of the target device.  This provides for optimimum compression based on the
device that the Procedure was dragged onto.  After installing FB/2, floppy
and system device objects will have compression set to SAVE SPACE since they
are random seek devices; tape objects will be set to SAVE TIME so optimum
streaming can be obtained. These settings may be set to your preference,
however.
                                                      
TIPS:   Many instances of device objects and Procedure objects may be created.
Simply open the FB/2 Templates folder and peel off a new instance,
dropping it wherever is most convenient for you.  Suppose you have 2
SCSI tape drives, and you wish to store your system critical backups on one
drive while using another to just quickly dump data to.  You can create two
instances of a SCSI Tape Object and have the SETTINGS | HARDWARE page point
to each respective drive.  You can also rename these objects to a more
familiar name (eg: "Full Backup Drive" and "Quick Data Drop Drive"...) and
place them wherever is most convenient to you.  You can simply drag a
folder object to the appropriate drive, where the scratch drive would perhaps
have backup type set to "full erase" (it will backup the data then erase
it off of the source) and "overwrite never" (so it just appends it to
the backups that are already on the tape) which would essentially move the
data from your source to the tape.


3.0 USING DRAG AND DROP TO PERFORM A RESTORE OR COMPARE
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Just like a DND backup, there are different ways of initiating a DND
compare or restore.

If you wish to do a full restore, full compare, or a history file
retrieve your first step will be to double-click a device object to get the
list of backups and their associated history files on the current media.

-The "data segments" can appear several different ways, depending on the
 view that you opened on your device object.  The data segments may have
 your comment that you entered at backup as a name or a name ending in a
 3 digit numeric extension.  You may also see it represented by a "safe" icon
 depending on the view opened.
-The "history files" will have "History File" as a name or a name ending in
 "ful", "cpy", "inc", "dif", or "ers".  Depending on what view you opened, you
 may also see a piece of paper and a quill icon representing the history file.

If you wish to restore an entire backup to original locations, you can start
it in one of two ways.  You can simply double-click on the first data
segment (the file ending in .001) of the backup you wish to restore, or
you can drag and drop it onto the OS/2 drives object.  This will bring up the
restore/compare progress screen, using the defaults in SETTINGS | RESTORE of
the device object.  You may also do a full compare from this compare/restore
progress screen.

If you wish to do a full restore/compare to a destination other than the
original locations, simply drag the safe icon (first data segment) to
your destination drive or folder.  All directories (even from
different source drives) will be rebuilt in the location you dropped
onto.

If you wish to do a selective restore via DND, you must first have the
history file for the backup.  If the history file already exists in your
FB/2 History folder, you can use that one.  If you need to retrieve it,
you can double-click on the history file to retrieve it to the history
folder or you can drag the history file (from the listing of files you got by
double-clicking on the device object) to any location you want and the history
file will be retrieved to that location.

Supposing you have the history file available now, you can double-click
it and you will see a tree representing the data that was backed up.
After selecting which files you wish to restore (by tagging or by
filespec), you can drag the safe icon of the tree (the 'root') to the desired
location.  If you drag the safe icon to the OS/2 drives object, your
selected files will go to the respective drives and directories that they
were originally backed up from.  If you want to restore the selected
files to a different location, you can.  The entire tree of selected
files will be rebuilt in the folder or drive that you dropped the safe
icon on.

TIPS:   Occasionally I will want to restore a file or two from a tape,
and since I use the comments extensively I can tell which backup the
latest version of the file I want is in.  Since I make so many backups,
I have FB/2 set to "save no history" to avoid cluttering up my history
folder with anything other than "major" backups.  If I want to do a
selective restore, I will need the history file for that backup on my local
system; so I will need to retrieve it from the device.   I will quickly
open the device (which I happen to have sitting on my desktop) and get a
listing of the backups.  I then simply drag the history file and drop it on
my desktop- when I am finished with it I can quickly shred it, keeping
only those "major" backup history files on my local system.


Using Drag and Drop is a powerful feature that OS/2 provides for it's
users.  By using DND with FB/2, we feel that you will improve the speed
at which you initialize FB/2 operations by more closely following the
operating system's paradigm.
