Projects:
                     Bacula Projects Roadmap 
                       22 July 2005

The following major projects are scheduled for 1.37:


Below, you will find more information on those projects as
well of other projects planned at a future time.

Item 1:   Implement Base jobs.
  Status: Voted by users not to be implemented in 1.37
  
  What:   A base job is sort of like a Full save except that you 
          will want the FileSet to contain only files that are
          unlikely to change in the future (i.e.  a snapshot of
          most of your system after installing it).  After the
          base job has been run, when you are doing a Full save,
          you specify one or more Base jobs to be used.  All
          files that have been backed up in the Base job/jobs but
          not modified will then be excluded from the backup.
          During a restore, the Base jobs will be automatically
          pulled in where necessary.

  Why:    This is something none of the competition does, as far as
          we know (except BackupPC, which is a Perl program that
          saves to disk only).  It is big win for the user, it
          makes Bacula stand out as offering a unique
          optimization that immediately saves time and money.
          Basically, imagine that you have 100 nearly identical
          Windows or Linux machine containing the OS and user
          files.  Now for the OS part, a Base job will be backed
          up once, and rather than making 100 copies of the OS,
          there will be only one.  If one or more of the systems
          have some files updated, no problem, they will be
          automatically restored.

  Notes:  Huge savings in tape usage even for a single machine.
          Will require more resources because the DIR must send
          FD a list of files/attribs, and the FD must search the
          list and compare it for each file to be saved.

Item 2:   Add Plug-ins to the FileSet Include statements.
  Status: In progress in 1.37 using Python scripting.

  What:   Allow users to specify wild-card and/or regular
          expressions to be matched in both the Include and
          Exclude directives in a FileSet.  At the same time,
          allow users to define plug-ins to be called (based on
          regular expression/wild-card matching).

  Why:    This would give the users the ultimate ability to control
          how files are backed up/restored.  A user could write a
          plug-in knows how to backup his Oracle database without
          stopping/starting it, for example.

Item 3:   Implement a Migration job type that will move the job
          data from one device to another.
  Status: Partially coded in 1.37 -- much more to do.

  What:   The ability to copy, move, or archive data that is on a
          device to another device is very important. 

  Why:    An ISP might want to backup to disk, but after 30 days
          migrate the data to tape backup and delete it from
          disk.  Bacula should be able to handle this
          automatically.  It needs to know what was put where,
          and when, and what to migrate -- it is a bit like
          retention periods.  Doing so would allow space to be
          freed up for current backups while maintaining older
          data on tape drives.

  Notes:  Migration could be triggered by:
           Number of Jobs
           Number of Volumes
           Age of Jobs
           Highwater size (keep total size)
           Lowwater mark

Item  9:  Implement data encryption (as opposed to communications
          encryption)
  Status: Landon Fuller has agreed to work on this.
                  
  What:   Currently the data that is stored on the Volume is not
          encrypted. For confidentiality, encryption of data at
          the File daemon level is essential. 
          Data encryption encrypts the data in the File daemon and
          decrypts the data in the File daemon during a restore.

  Why:    Large sites require this.


Items completed for release 1.38.0:
#4   Embedded Python Scripting (implemented in all Daemons)
#5   Events that call a Python program (Implemented in all
       daemons, but more cleanup work to be done).
#6   Select one from among Multiple Storage Devices for Job.
       This is already implemented in 1.37.
#7   Single Job Writing to Multiple Storage Devices. This is
       currently implemented with a Clone feature.
#-   Full multiple drive Autochanger support (mostly implemented).
#-   We will have built in support for communications 
       encryption (TLS) done by Landon Fuller.
#    We will most likely have support for Unicode characters
       (via UTF-8) on Win32 machines thanks to Thorsten Engle.
Item  8:  Break the one-to-one Relationship between a Job and a
          Specific Storage Device (or Devices if #10 is implemented).

Completed items from last year's list:
Item 1:   Multiple simultaneous Jobs. (done)
Item 3:   Write the bscan program -- also write a bcopy program (done).
Item 5:   Implement Label templates (done).
Item 6:   Write a regression script (done)
Item 9:   Add SSL to daemon communications (For now, implement with
          stunnel)
Item 10:  Define definitive tape format (done)
Item 3:   GUI for interactive restore. Partially Implemented in 1.34
          Note, there is now a complete Webmin plugin, a partial
          GNOME console, and an excellent wx-console GUI.
Item 4:   GUI for interactive backup
Item 2:   Job Data Spooling.
    Done: Regular expression matching.
Item 10:  New daemon communication protocol (this has been dropped).