non cumulative differential backup for SQL Server SQL Server natively do not support non-cumulative differential backup type.
I wonder why independent backup software providers like from RedGate, Idera or Quest do not support it either?
It looks easy to implement: just store LSN from last non-cumulative backup and put in the backup files only pages changed from this LSN and could be useful for log shipping databases in simply recovery mode.
Is there any caveat I am missing?
Transaction log backups are incremental, that is, they only store incremental changes since the previous transaction log backup.
And they do it more or less as you told, using last well know backuped LSN (a checkpoint).
This is why you have to restore the full backup and then all the TLOG backups in the proper order.
But this requires full recovery model. Differential backups work in all recovery models, namely Simple, Bulk-Logged, and Full.
If you want incremental backups (i.e. non-cumulative differential backup), take transaction log backups regularly.