Question re RMAN

Greetings,

I am trying to verify my understanding of an aspect of RMAN and am hoping someone can confirm my understanding or correct me if I am misunderstanding. The questions refer to using the controlfile rather than a catalog (although I believe the situation is the same for most statements when using a catalog). I am using RMAN backing up directly to disk and then during a later window backing up to tape.

The crosscheck command lists backup pieces as 'EXPIRED' if they are not available, so those pieces removed after being backed up to tape will appear as 'EXPIRED'. If I were to restore them to the backup location on disk a crosscheck command would again show them as available, is that correct?

Even if a backup piece is available, if it is older than the CONTROL_FILE_RECORD_KEEP_TIME RMAN would not be able to restore the database using that backup piece. Is that correct?

If I were to issue an RMAN delete expired backup command the information would be removed from the control file and, even if the backup piece were available on disk, RMAN would not be able to use it to perform a restore. Is that correct.

I understand it is possible to add this information back to the controlfile but unfortunately I don't have a system I can use to play with this so any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

Bill Wagman
Univ. of California at Davis
IET Campus Data Center
wjwagman_at_ucdavis.edu
(530) 754-6208

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