create controlfile question...????

Scenario is as follows.
We have an enquiry only database that we do a complete update of each night. Before we start the update, the following steps are followed. Shutdown database.
Copy complete database to backup dir (log files, data and control, parameter etc, etc..)

On the Backed-up DB ..
Amend parameter file to point to new path & change dbname to 'backup' Start backup database.
issue a create controlfile ....
(recreate control files pointing at new datafile paths and dbname.) open database and make sure it is up and running in its own instance.

Once we are sure this 'backup' database is working, we then start the dayend procedure to update the actual 'live' database' This is all done on one physical machine. So when it is done we have two instances of the DB running.
One with the 'live' version of the data and one with 'history' version of the data.
This is so that if something happens during the dayend, the users will still have a backup DB to connect to in the morning. This all works very well and since we are doing a filesystem copy it is quite quick (DB Size is about 10gb)

So now my question.
On our test system (which is a duplicate of the live) I created
1) a new temporary tablespace 'srctemp_ts' (filespec d:\...\...\...\srctemp.dbf'
2) a new 'normal' tablespace 'srcdata_ts' (filespec d:\...\...\...\srcdata.dbf'
3) a user src using these tablespaces.
4) some tables using 'src' user.
All worked ok.

But then tested copying DB. Executed 'create controlfile' command and it failed.
error says 'srctemp.dbf' is not a datafile. So using the logic that it is not a true datafile (being a file for a temporary tablespace?) I took it out of the create control command. And it all worked fine....
Except....!!!!
Can connect as src user (which uses srctemp_ts) and select on objects. srctemp_ts exists as per dba_tablespaces srctemp.dbf does not get listed from dba_data_files; srctemp.dbf does not get listed from dba_temp_files; So temp tablespace exists but I can't see the data file that it is connected to?
I would not have expected the DB to startup as it currently set?

Sorry for the long mail. But confused and needed some help. Any comments with regards to the way we handle creating a backup database would also be appreciated.

Regards
Mark Received on Wed Jun 06 2001 - 08:36:19 CDT