What Is the Really Unique Feature of Bacula?
Well, it is hard to come up with unique features when backup programs for Unix machines have been around since the 1960s. That said, I believe that Bacula is the first and only program to use a standard SQL interface to catalog its database. Although this adds a bit of complexity and possibly overhead, it provides an amazingly rich set of features that are easy to program and enhance. The current code has barely scratched the surface in this regard (version 1.38). The second feature, which gives a lot of power and flexibility to Bacula is the Bootstrap record definition. The third unique feature, which is currently (1.30) unimplemented, and thus can be called vaporware :-), is Base level saves. When implemented, this will enormously reduce tape usage.
