anyone know how to grab a copy of live data from hr/pr while the ap/gl folks are still logged in and working? we will be asking hr/pr to log out during this time, but our admin person has always done this copy/export while kicking out all users, etc.

any help would be tremendous.

For all the Lawson utilities, everything is (to paraphrase Popeye) "I reads what I sees when I gets to it!", which means that you MAY encounter difficulties where some relational data is out of sync between tables that are alphabetically diverse. Now as to whether that will be an issue, since it will be non-HR data, is a question that remains to be answered.

Conversely, I've talked with some DBAs (I am NOT one) on different RDBMS and remeber hearing about "point-in-time" backups that would freeze the DB at a given instance for backup. Another possibility is that in mirrored systems it's possible to break the mirror and backup the offline side while the users continue - then resync afterward.

g'luck!!

I am also not a DBA, but I play one on TV. Anyway, I cannot tell you ALL of the ramifications, I can tell you the following from experience...

Generally speaking, you will get caught with transactions mid-process. As fas as I know, our technical folks perform these "hot" copies in the dark hours of the night, just so that we minimize the issue. However, dealing with the Materials/Procurement modules as I do, we see the problem manifest itself in document numbers being out of synch (WH Shipment numbers ALWAYS, ALWAY, always). We end up having to do a good deal of "pruning" before we can get down to the actual job at hand (testing, converting, etc.).

The primary question is, "What are you using this for?" If this is for a test environment, it is not that big a deal...it is a small perentage after all. But if this is a backup, intended to possibly restore the system, then I might want to reconsider. At the very least, I would still want to schedule it off-hours.

Just my $0.02, from a mid- to end-user's perspective,