One significant advantage to using the dump method is that you can perform an incremental backup of the file system portion independent of the metadata backup. The metadata dump is not incremental. However, the size is much less than the size of the file system data. So both the time and disk space required for each backup can be considerably less than a full pack file.
A dump file is also useful when you upgrade from one release of Rational® Synergy to the next. You can dump a database using an older release and load it under a new release as part of the upgrade process.
You also can move a dump file to different machines and different architectures. That is, you can move a dump file from one UNIX® platform to another, or from UNIX to Windows®. If you move a dump file between Windows and UNIX databases and use standard file system tools to move the file system portion of the database, you must run ccmdb upgrade /w on the reconstructed database before using it. See Moving databases between UNIX and Windows.