Please know what Recovery Mode your databases are in and your recovery requirements and then back them up accordingly.

Too often I see databases that are in a Full or Bulk Logged recovery mode but do not have transaction log backups running.  If you’re not performing transaction log backups there really is no good reason to be in a Full or Bulk Logged Recovery Mode.

Below is a script that you can run against a single instance or if you use a Central Management Server ( See Brent Ozar’s post on CMS) that you can use as a starting point to provide information on your databases, what recovery mode then are in, and their most recent Full, Differential, and Transaction Log Backup Date/Time.  I’ve also included the databases “Updateability” and “UserAccess” as these settings would play a role in your backup strategy.

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SELECT 	A.dbid, A.name as [DatabaseName], 
		CONVERT(sysname,DATABASEPROPERTYEX(A.name, 'Recovery')) AS [RecoveryMode],
		(	SELECT	max(backup_finish_date) 
			FROM	msdb.dbo.backupset 
			WHERE	[type] = 'D' and 
					database_name = A.name) AS [LastFullBackupDateTime],
		(	SELECT	max(backup_finish_date) 
			FROM	msdb.dbo.backupset 
			WHERE	[type] = 'I' and 
					database_name = A.name) AS [LastDiffBackupDateTime],
		(	SELECT	max(backup_finish_date) 
			FROM	msdb.dbo.backupset 
			WHERE	[type] = 'L' and 
					database_name = A.name) AS [LastLogBackupDateTime],
		CONVERT(sysname,DATABASEPROPERTYEX(A.name, 'Updateability')) Updateability,
		CONVERT(sysname,DATABASEPROPERTYEX(A.name, 'UserAccess')) UserAccess
FROM 	master.dbo.sysdatabases A WITH(NOLOCK)
WHERE 	A.name NOT IN ('tempdb')
GROUP BY A.dbid, A.name
ORDER BY A.name

Policy Based Management is also a great way to alert you on databases that do not have an appropriate backup configuration but if you’re not quite “there” yet this is a good place to start until you bridge that gap.

 
Here is a quick description of each Recovery Mode’s backup capabilities:

Simple Recovery Mode

• Full Backups – Yes
• Differential Backups – Yes
• Transaction Log Backups are NOT available because transactions are truncated from the transaction log usually after each checkpoint

Bulk-Logged Recovery Mode

• Full Backups – Yes
• Differential Backups – Yes
• Transaction Log Backups – Yes (but Bulk Operations like BCP, Bulk Insert, etc are minimally logged)

Full Recovery Mode

• Full Backups – Yes
• Differential Backups – Yes
• Transaction Log Backups – Yes

Enjoy!!

Short Answer: YES

It had been a while since I worked with SQL 2000 Replication so I was fairly confident that you could but wasn’t willing to just go and do it without a proper test first.

I took at copy of the database that I was looking to do this on and built myself a little test enivornment.  I made sure my database was in full recovery mode… setup a transactional replication publication, distributor, and subscriber identical to the environment I’m wanting to do this on.  I inserted, updated, and deleted some rows just to make sure everything was tickity-boo before doing my test.

I altered the publisher database and set the recovery mode to Simple without doing anything special to replication… I did more inserts, updates, and deletes and everything flowed through smoothly.  I switch it back to Full Recovery Mode and lather, rinse, repeat and everything still worked fine.

When I Binged the question I didn’t get many (or any) hits that applied.  One link I went to (totally unrelated) was very scary/interesting… A user asked about using Simple Recovery Mode and whether Replication will work or not… someone told them that you can’t use simple recovery mode cause transactional replication depends on the transaction log and that a checkpoint will flush everything out (replicated or not) and cause replication to fail. 

*sigh* another example of why you don’t want to take everything you read at face value without investigating on your own.  Some answers are just clearly wrong (like the one above)… while others are kind of right depending on the situation and need.  My replication test I just performed worked successfully for me but just for arguements sake what if there was a publication setting somewhere that would invalidate your publication and force you into a reinitializing your subscribers?

I guess the moral of the story is something that has been commented on by many people in the community.  The internet is a great resource for finding information and answers but at the end of the day it’s up to YOU to test and ensure that the information and answers you get are right for you and your environment.

Enjoy!!!