How to check the information in a backup device?

Question

for example, if I have a disk dump device, then I use this device for backup, maybe full backup, maybe log backup, maybe incremental backup or even backup different database to this dump device.
Then I can I extract the information about how many different type of backup in this device? any command can list the all backup info?

Answer 1

Disk dump devices are typically useful for dumps to a tape drive, ie, the tape drive address rarely (if ever) changes ... so an operator just has to switch out tapes on a regular basis while the regularly scheduled jobs dump to the same device every time.
For filesystem-based dumps you're better off skipping the use of dump devices and just generate a dump file name on the fly.
Keep in mind that you do NOT have to dump to a dump device.  You can dump straight to a file ...
===========================
dump database mydb to "/dump_dir/MYDS.mydb.20140321.211537.dbdump"
===========================
... and you can even go so far as to build the dump command 'on the fly' with T-SQL, eg:
===========================
declare @dumpcmd varchar(500), @dbname varchar(30)
select  @dbname = db_name()
select  @dumpcmd = 'dump database '+@dbname+' to "/dump_dir/'+@@servername+'.'+@dbname+'.'+
           convert(varchar,getdate(),112)+'.'+
           str_replace(convert(varchar,getdate(),108),':',null)+'.dbdump"'
exec(@dumpcmd)
===========================
NOTE: I'm not sitting at an ASE at the moment so you'll need to doublecheck the syntax of the above T-SQL.