So last night during the geek night session at the SDC, the Dutch, inspired by Richard Campbell called me on my SMO Backup and Restore GUI that had a progress meter. They thought I was hacking it, not that I was actually providing a true representation of the progress made by the status of the backup. Here is the progress meter in action, as the database backup makes progress we update the progress meter:

To do a backup programmatically you can to use SMO (see yesterday). Begin by setting the variables to get started.

Server svr = new Server();//assuming local server

Backup bkp = new Backup();

Cursor = Cursors.WaitCursor;

Then you have to set the device to backup to and what database to backup. Notice in the comments the code to the progress meter

try

{

      string strFileName = txtFileName.Text.ToString();

      string strDatabaseName = txtDatabase.Text.ToString();

      bkp.Action = BackupActionType.Database;

      bkp.Database = strDatabaseName;

      //set the device: File, Tape, etc

      bkp.Devices.AddDevice(strFileName, DeviceType.File);

      //set this when you want to do Incremental

      bkp.Incremental = chkIncremental.Checked;

      //progress meter stuff

      progressBar1.Value = 0;

      progressBar1.Maximum = 100;

progressBar1.Value = 10;

      //this gives us the % complete by handling the event

      //provided by SMO on the percent complete, we will

      //update the progress meter in the event handler

      //set the progress meter to 10% by default

bkp.PercentCompleteNotification = 10;

//call to the event handler to incriment the progress meter

bkp.PercentComplete += new PercentCompleteEventHandler(ProgressEventHandler);

//this does the backup

      bkp.SqlBackup(svr);

      //alert the user when it is all done

      MessageBox.Show("Database Backed Up To: " + strFileName, "SMO Demos");

      }

catch (SmoException exSMO)

      {

      MessageBox.Show(exSMO.ToString());

      }

catch (Exception ex)

      {

      MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());

      }

finally

      {

      Cursor = Cursors.Default;

      progressBar1.Value = 0;

      }

Here is the ProgressEventHandler, notice that I made it generic enough that I can call it from both the backup and restore methods!

public void ProgressEventHandler(object sender, PercentCompleteEventArgs e)

      {

            //increase the progress bar up by the percent

            progressBar1.Value = e.Percent;

      }