shutdown immediate or abort for cold-backup?

Hello,

what are your experiences for the shutdown-strategy of an ORACLE database for cold backup?

our dba has changed the strategy from

1.) shutdown abort - startup restricted - shutdown immediate

to

2.) shutdown immediate

we have now the problem with a longrunning batch-application causing the shutdown immediate never take effect, so that the database is not available in the morning for the online-users.

I searched already on metalink, but the answers of the oracle consultants are contradictory :
One says "if the shutdown immediate hangs use shutdown abort". Another one says "do not trust in a backup after shutdown abort" - but what if you restart - cleanup by that and "shutdown immediate" afterwards?

The DBA tells it depends on the version and is most probably solved in 8.1.7.

But that's what they always say ;-)
and to switch to 8.1.7 would be again a major testing issue i wanted to avoid and switch directly to 9i (say, in about a year, if it is uable for production ;-))

The database is ORACLE 8.1.6.3.1 on HP-UX11.

Do we need to change this longrunning application (efforts!) or is it recommended for the DBA to switch to the shutdown-strategy of before? - Of course, we don't want to have unusable backups either.

Any practical experiences?

Thanks a lot.

Greetings
Henry Received on Fri Aug 17 2001 - 04:34:09 CDT