Using RMAN to recover a copy of a database from backup files only

From: Steve Wales <sjwales_at_comcast.net>
Date: Wed, 2 May 2012 18:51:59 -0600
Message-ID: <1905C97299574908B2DB8D8D3A534200_at_StevePC>



Today we had a major data corruption happen from a user process and had to roll back production to before the process happened.  

What I thought I did was this:  

  1. Copy Prod to Test as of the point in time of the rollback decision. (5/2/2012 16:00)
  2. Recover Prod to the requested point in time (5/2/2012 11:00)

This then would give the users a system to look into in order to make sure that other data unrelated to the corruption could be re-entered without anything being missed.  

However, I just realized that I screwed up the time on the test duplication and not all the data is there.  

Since at the end of the prod recovery I did a resetlogs, I have a new incarnation of the database - I'm pretty sure the backup chain before the resetlogs is invalid and I can't just go and duplicate until time to a point in time before the resetlogs - I haven't tested it because I don't want to mess anything up.  

I found a white paper about restoring a database when you only have the backup files, but that's not quite what I need.  

I need to be able to duplicate a database (create test, from prod backups) to a point in time before the reset logs, just using the backup files. I have the backups of spfile, control files and the full, incremental and archive logs on disk from the last 14 days.  

Haven't been able to find instructions on this one yet and I really would prefer to have the correct version of the test database available in the morning.  

Anyone have some pointers on this one ?  

Thanks
Steve

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Received on Wed May 02 2012 - 19:51:59 CDT

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