Why is the Backup/Restore Process Slower when Using the Ascent Program?
To perform a backup, the software must iterate through all of the data in the database, asking the database engine for every item individually so that it can write the data to a backup file. Each item of data must be translated from the database format to the SQL format that the Ascent software uses to communicate with the database. The Ascent program then translates the data from SQL format to a binary format to write to the backup file. The InterBase/Firebird backup facilities have direct access to the database itself and can work through the database file, generating the backup file without all these extra translation stages.
