When you have many backups and are trying to restore your database quickly, the -describe function helps you identify which backup you want to select, based on the returned information. When appended to the PROREST utility, -describe lists basic, yet thorough, information about a database backup file.

The -describe function is compatible with all versions of OpenEdge database backups. You can use this function if you upgraded to a more recent version of OpenEdge, but need descriptive information about a database backup from a previous version.

For example, the following syntax returns a description of the specified backup file. 
prorest <db-name> <backup-file-name> -describe
Sample output for a full backup follows:
Table 1. Full backup 


Volume 1 of a full backup for database: /largedisk/demos/PI2021-4/prorest-describe-demo/demodb.db
The backup was taken at: Tue Oct 12 17:46:11 2021
The OpenEdge version where the backup was taken: OpenEdge Release 12.5
The minimum OpenEdge version to restore the backup: OpenEdge Release 12.5
The backup version: 0xd1 (209)
The platform for the backup: Linux
The endianness for the backup: Little Endian
Online backup (online): TRUE
Incremental backup (-incremental): FALSE
Enable AI online (enableai): FALSE
Backup BI clusters (bibackup): TRUE
Volume size (-vs): 0
Blocking factor (-bf): 34
Backup without recovery (-norecover): FALSE
Compression (-com): TRUE
Compression level (-comlevel): 3
Incremental overlap factor (-io): 0
Redundancy factor (-red): 0

Descriptions from older version backups that do not support certain features display Unknown for those items.

For more information, see PROREST utility and Obtain backup file descriptions using PROREST -describe utility.