rsync: Reliably copying files from local file system to NAS

[Helveticus]

That could be an option. Another option could be to use find to put a list of all the files in a temporary file and then using --include-from=/tmp/filenames to copy just those files.

How can I create such a temporary file with find so that database/session_*.db are included but database/session* are excluded?

[HermanAB]

You can run rsync multiple times and first copy the important ones:
rsync -a "/whatever/session_*.db" /wherever/

Followed by the rest with a blanket exclude:
rsync -a --exclude="*session*" /whatever/ /wherever/