RAD Studio IDE Backup and FireDAC Connection Settings Integration

Short answer

No on all three counts, at least with the built-in tooling. RAD Studio's IDE Backup & Restore captures registry-based IDE options, editor layout, and project desktop state. It does not treat FireDAC connection definitions as part of that set, it has no step that re-applies them automatically after a restore, and there is no built-in hook to run a verification query against a restored database. All three gaps have to be closed with your own scripts.

Why the connection settings are missing

FireDAC stores named connection definitions in FDConnectionDefs.ini (per-user or per-machine, depending on how TFDManager is configured), and the IDE's Data Explorer reads from the same store. That file lives outside the folders the backup wizard archives, unless you happened to place it inside a backed-up profile directory such as %APPDATA%\Embarcadero\BDS\<version>\. The IDE backup and FireDAC's own SQL-script-based backup/restore components are unrelated mechanisms — one saves IDE state, the other saves database contents — so nothing bridges them by default.

One caution: the exact set of folders the wizard captures has changed across RAD Studio 10.x, 11.x, and 12.x, so treat the above as the general behavior and verify against your version rather than assuming a specific path list.

Closing the gap yourself

A workable pattern has three parts:

1. Extend the backup set. Add a pre-backup step (a small batch or PowerShell script) that copies FDConnectionDefs.ini into a folder the wizard does capture, or simply archive it alongside the IDE backup zip.
2. Re-apply on restore. A post-restore script copies the file back to the FireDAC connection-definitions location before the IDE first starts. After that, Data Explorer and design-time TFDConnection components resolve the named connections as before.
3. Verify with a probe project. Keep a minimal test project containing a TFDConnection and TFDQuery that runs a trivial statement (for example SELECT 1, or SELECT 1 FROM RDB$DATABASE on InterBase/Firebird) against each restored connection and writes the result to a log. Launch it headlessly from your restore SOP, e.g. via rsvars.bat plus an MSBuild target that builds and runs the probe, and fail the restore checklist if any query errors.

Two traps worth knowing about

• Encrypted passwords. FDConnectionDefs.ini can store encrypted credentials. Moving the file to a different machine or user profile may require the same master password, or you will have to re-enter credentials after restore.
• File-based databases. Definitions pointing at local SQLite or InterBase files break silently if the database file's absolute path changed during migration. Your probe query is exactly what catches this.

Verifying the claims on your own install

Run Tools → Backup Settings, open the resulting archive, and confirm whether FDConnectionDefs.ini is present. Then restore onto a clean VM, open Data Explorer, and check whether your named connections appear. That ten-minute test settles the question for your specific RAD Studio version, which matters more than any general statement — including this one.