Point-in-Time Recovery

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Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR) is the ability of a Database, to reset their state to a freely selectable point in the past – not just to the last full backup point. The goal is to restore a faulty state (accidental deletion, erroneous bulk booking, data corruption) as close as possible before the incident, without losing all the hours or days afterwards.

Context

For SAP Business One, PITR builds on two cornerstones: One Full Backup as a starting point and ongoing Log-backups (Transaction Log in MS SQL, Log Segments in HANA), which have since logged all changes without temporal gaps. During restore, the full backup is applied and the logs are rolled forward up to the desired timestamp (e.g. 15:43:12 on 03.02.2026). The smaller the log backup interval, the more precise the restorable point in time – 15–30 minutes are common in B1 production environments. PITR is typically needed when a mass action corrupts data (e.g. faulty DTW import, incorrect DATEV import, wrong script) and a clean prior state is required. On HANA, the log-mode setting must be Normal stand (not Overwrite), on MS SQL, the recovery model must be set to Full stehen — both are standard in productive B1 installations.

Demarcation

PITR is not identical to a SnapshotSnapshots freeze a state once, PITR allows continuous rollback. It is also not the same as High availability (HA) – HA maintains operations during hardware failures, PITR repairs logical errors. Compared to an hourly full backup, PITR is significantly more efficient because only the logs, not the complete database, need to be continuously backed up. The prerequisite is a disciplined backup strategy – no PITR without backed-up logs.