Preface

This preface contains these topics:

Audience

Backup and Recovery Advanced User's Guide is intended for database administrators who perform the following tasks:

Back up, restore, and recover Oracle databases
Perform maintenance on backups of database files

To use this document, you need to know the following:

Relational database concepts and basic database administration as described in Oracle Database Concepts and the Oracle Database Administrator's Guide
Basic backup and recovery concepts and strategies as described in Oracle Database Backup and Recovery Basics
The operating system environment under which you are running the database

Organization

This document contains:

Part I, "Recovery Manager Advanced Architecture and Concepts"

This section offers detailed conceptual information for Recovery Manager (RMAN).

Chapter 1, "Recovery Manager Architecture"

This chapter describes the application architecture of the RMAN environment.

Chapter 2, "RMAN Backups Concepts"

This chapter describes how to start RMAN and connect to target, catalog, and auxiliary databases.

Chapter 3, "RMAN Recovery Concepts"

This chapter describes basic concepts involved in RMAN restore, recovery, and database duplication.

Chapter 4, "RMAN Maintenance Concepts"

This chapter describes basic concepts involved in maintaining the RMAN repository.

Part II, "Performing Advanced RMAN Backup and Recovery"

This section describes advanced procedures for using RMAN.

Chapter 5, "Connecting to Databases with RMAN"

This chapter gives detailed information for how to connect to databases with RMAN.

Chapter 6, "Configuring the RMAN Environment: Advanced Topics"

This chapter describes advanced configurations in the RMAN environment.

Chapter 7, "Making Backups with RMAN: Advanced Topics"

This chapter describes detailed procedure for using the BACKUP command.

Chapter 8, "Advanced RMAN Recovery Techniques"

This chapter includes advanced scenarios and techniques using the RESTORE and RECOVER commands.

Chapter 9, "Flashback Technology: Recovering from Logical Corruptions"

This chapter describes the Flashback features of the Oracle database, and their use in a data recovery context.

Chapter 10, "RMAN Tablespace Point-in-Time Recovery (TSPITR)"

This chapter describes how to recover one or more tablespaces to a past point in time without affecting the rest of the database.

Chapter 11, "Duplicating a Database with Recovery Manager"

This chapter describes how to use DUPLICATE to create a copy of the target database.

Chapter 12, "Migrating Databases To and From ASM with Recovery Manager"

This chapter describes how to use RMAN to move databases into and out of Automatic Storage Management disk groups.

Chapter 13, "Managing the Recovery Catalog"

This chapter describes how to create and manage a recovery catalog.

Chapter 14, "Tuning Backup and Recovery"

This chapter gives tips for improving RMAN backup and restore performance.

Chapter 15, "Recovery Manager Troubleshooting"

This chapter gives tips for diagnosing and responding to RMAN problems.

Part III, "Performing User-Managed Backup and Recovery"

This section describes how to use operating system utilities to back up and restore a database and how to use the SQL*Plus RECOVER command.

Chapter 16, "Making User-Managed Backups"

This chapter describes how to use operating system command to back up database files and archived redo logs.

Chapter 17, "Performing User-Managed Database Flashback and Recovery"

This chapter describes how to use the SQL*Plus FLASHBACK DATABASE and RECOVER commands.

Chapter 18, "Advanced User-Managed Recovery Scenarios"

This chapter describes advanced scenarios involving user-managed restore and recovery.

Chapter 19, "Performing User-Managed TSPITR"

This chapter describes how to perform user-managed TSPITR.

Chapter 20, "Troubleshooting User-Managed Media Recovery"

This chapter describes how to diagnose and solve problems in user-managed media recovery.

Conventions

This section describes the conventions used in the text and code examples of this documentation set. It describes:

Conventions in Text

We use various conventions in text to help you more quickly identify special terms. The following table describes those conventions and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
Bold	Bold typeface indicates terms that are defined in the text or terms that appear in a glossary, or both.	When you specify this clause, you create an index-organized table.
Italics	Italic typeface indicates book titles or emphasis.	Oracle Database Concepts Ensure that the recovery catalog and target database do not reside on the same disk.
`UPPERCASE monospace (fixed-width) font`	Uppercase monospace typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. Such elements include parameters, privileges, datatypes, RMAN keywords, SQL keywords, SQL*Plus or utility commands, packages and methods, as well as system-supplied column names, database objects and structures, usernames, and roles.	You can specify this clause only for a `NUMBER` column. You can back up the database by using the `BACKUP` command. Query the `TABLE_NAME` column in the `USER_TABLES` data dictionary view. Use the `DBMS_STATS`.`GENERATE_STATS` procedure.
`lowercase monospace (fixed-width) font`	Lowercase monospace typeface indicates executables, filenames, directory names, and sample user-supplied elements. Such elements include computer and database names, net service names, and connect identifiers, as well as user-supplied database objects and structures, column names, packages and classes, usernames and roles, program units, and parameter values. Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.	Enter `sqlplus` to open SQL*Plus. The password is specified in the `orapwd` file. Back up the datafiles and control files in the `/disk1/oracle/dbs` directory. The `department_id`, `department_name`, and `location_id` columns are in the `hr.departments` table. Set the `QUERY_REWRITE_ENABLED` initialization parameter to `true.` Connect as `oe` user. The `JRepUtil` class implements these methods.
`lowercase italic monospace (fixed-width) font`	Lowercase italic monospace font represents placeholders or variables.	You can specify the `parallel_clause`. Run `U``old_release``.SQL` where `old_release` refers to the release you installed prior to upgrading.

Conventions in Code Examples

Code examples illustrate SQL, PL/SQL, SQL*Plus, or other command-line statements. They are displayed in a monospace (fixed-width) font and separated from normal text as shown in this example:

SELECT username FROM dba_users WHERE username = 'MIGRATE';

The following table describes typographic conventions used in code examples and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
[ ]	Brackets enclose one or more optional items. Do not enter the brackets.	DECIMAL (digits [ , precision ])
{ }	Braces enclose two or more items, one of which is required. Do not enter the braces.	{ENABLE \| DISABLE}
\|	A vertical bar represents a choice of two or more options within brackets or braces. Enter one of the options. Do not enter the vertical bar.	{ENABLE \| DISABLE} [COMPRESS \| NOCOMPRESS]
...	Horizontal ellipsis points indicate either: That we have omitted parts of the code that are not directly related to the example That you can repeat a portion of the code	CREATE TABLE ... AS subquery; SELECT col1, col2, ... , coln FROM employees;
. . .	Vertical ellipsis points indicate that we have omitted several lines of code not directly related to the example.	SQL> SELECT NAME FROM V$DATAFILE; NAME ------------------------------------ /fsl/dbs/tbs_01.dbf /fs1/dbs/tbs_02.dbf . . . /fsl/dbs/tbs_09.dbf 9 rows selected.
Other notation	You must enter symbols other than brackets, braces, vertical bars, and ellipsis points as shown.	acctbal NUMBER(11,2); acct CONSTANT NUMBER(4) := 3;
Italics	Italicized text indicates placeholders or variables for which you must supply particular values.	CONNECT SYSTEM/system_password DB_NAME = database_name
UPPERCASE	Uppercase typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. We show these terms in uppercase in order to distinguish them from terms you define. Unless terms appear in brackets, enter them in the order and with the spelling shown. However, because these terms are not case sensitive, you can enter them in lowercase.	SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees; SELECT * FROM USER_TABLES; DROP TABLE hr.employees;
lowercase	Lowercase typeface indicates programmatic elements that you supply. For example, lowercase indicates names of tables, columns, or files. Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.	SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees; sqlplus hr/hr CREATE USER mjones IDENTIFIED BY ty3MU9;

Documentation Accessibility

Our goal is to make Oracle products, services, and supporting documentation accessible, with good usability, to the disabled community. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle Corporation is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For additional information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/

Accessibility of Code Examples in Documentation

JAWS, a Windows screen reader, may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, JAWS may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.

Accessibility of Links to External Web Sites in Documentation

This documentation may contain links to Web sites of other companies or organizations that Oracle Corporation does not own or control. Oracle Corporation neither evaluates nor makes any representations regarding the accessibility of these Web sites.