Whilst you should have a regular backup of the entire CSE (and GuardIEn) database for disaster recovery purposes, this backup would only allow you to restore the entire encyclopaedia.
What happens if you have a problem with one model caused by a corruption or 'user error'?
A common technique for backing up individual models from the CSE is to run a frequent download "with upload option" of the model to create an update.trn for the model to be used in case of an issue with the model. if you need to revert to the backup version of the model, you can rename or delete the current model and upload from the update.trn file created by the download.
A major problem with this approach is that it creates a new model in the CSE that does not retain ancestry with other models in the same project. You then need to adopt the model, which might be very time-consuming if it needs to be adopted to multiple models, and can also be error-prone since if any of the objects that previously had ancestry have since been renamed in one of the models, the adoption will not re-establish ancestry.
The technique that we use is to run an extract with apply option instead. This creates a child model which can then be loaded back into the CSE with ancestry retained. Child models are not very usable, so there is an additional step involved to copy the child model to create a full model and then delete the child model. However ancestry is retained.
At IET we have a weekend automated script (executed as a user defined task using the Task Assistant) that extracts all of our current models to a backup file as additional level of backup over and above the database backups and archive logs. Thankfully we have not yet had to use them, but it is comforting to know that they are available.
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