Overview
SQL Server is a relational database management system which uses database objects like tables to store its data. A database table contains very important information of a database user. Thus, if it got corrupted due to any reason, the database user must have a plan like, restore from a recent backup to rescue its table’s data, but the problem would occur while restoring the entire backup for a single table. It is possible that the other database tables might have some changes due to this restore operation, but there are some tricks, which we will get to know in this section, by which you can easily perform SQL Server object level recovery.
Methods to Perform SQL Server Object Level Recovery
Whenever we face any trouble in SQL Server database, which may cause data loss or any kind of corruption, we first look at our recent backup, by which, we can prevent the data loss. SQL Server provides the option to create a database backup and restore it, whenever required. Let’s see how to bring it to work.
- Restoring SQL Server Database
In SQL Server database, one can perform SQL Server object level recovery by restoring a recent backup to a different database. Once you have successfully restored the database to a different database, you can select the table, which you wanted to recover and copy it to your database. To accomplish this task, you must have the transaction log backups or full database backup and if you haven’t performed any full backup then you cannot perform this task.
- Use Restore Command with STOPAT Clause
Another option to perform the object level recovery in SQL Server is to try restoring your transaction log backup. The RESTORE LOG command with STOPAT clause enables you to restore the transaction log backup to the specific time, when the specific change has happened.
- RESTORE LOG mydb FROM mydbbackups WITH FILE=4, NORECOVERY, STOPAT = 'june 27, 2015 02:00 PM';
The command given above will rollback your database from the transaction log backup to a specific time. The main disadvantage of this command is that the restoration process will make changes on all the other database tables, if you have not restored the recent backup.
- Using BCP Utility to Retrieve the Changes
In SQL Server, one can export the table data into the data file and again it imports it into SQL Server database, using bulk copy program utility(BCP). You can use this program to generate a script for a specific table or import a large number of rows into the database tables. To understand a user-specified format, you need to use a format file to understand the structure of the specific table's data to perform an object level recovery in SQL Server.
Conclusion
SQL Server is an advanced level database management system, which
provides multiple ways to accomplish a task. There might be
multiple ways to perform the same task in SQL Server database. One
can choose any of the options, mentioned above to retrieve a specific table’s
data or rollback the changes performed on a specific table. However,
each method has its own drawbacks that one must remember before going
through a specific method to perform an object level recovery in SQL
Server database. In case the above discussed methods don't prove helpful to you, going with a third party
SQL Database Recovery
Software can be much more helpful to prevent the data loss.