Re: Clone questions

On Thu, 7 Jul 2005 23:04:10 -0500, "Dale" <dschmitz4_at_cox.net> wrote:

>I hope this is the right forum for this. If not, please point me elsewhere.
>
>I'm a newbie with Oracle administration and I'm tasked with cloning our
>production database and starting it up as a development database.
>
>I have a few books on Oracle and have read enouhg (I hope) to tackle the
>problem using the procedure outlined at
>www.dba-oracle.com/oracle_tips_db_copy.htm. The procedure seems straight
>forward enough, but I have two questions that I can't answer from my reading
>(or at least can't find in my books):
>
>1. Once the cloned database is created and started, is connecting to it as
>simple as changing my ORACLE_SID variable to the new database SID and then
>connecting as normal?
>
>2. Will the clone require a separate instance of Oracle to be started up?
>I'm a bit confused between the terms "instantiation" and "incarnation". I
>don't know if they apply here. Do I have potential license issues here?
>
>TIA
>Dale Schmitz
>
>

First of all, I wouldn't trust anything written by Don Burleson. Even this little procedure stinks
1 Production databases shouldn't run in noarchivelog 2 It is useless to have redolog groups with multiple members, the multiple members residing on the same disk. The main reason for having multiple members is that once a disk goes down, you still have an indentical copy on a different disk.
3 The advice of Don Burleson to remove the lines starting with 'recover database' is dangerous. If this is a cold backup of a database running in noarchivelog, nothing would happen when issuing recover database. If this is a hot backup of a database running in archivelog, and you did follow Burleson's advice, you wouldn't be able to open your database.

Once again, it shows Mr. Burleson is a self-proclaimed 'guru', whose advice is often dangerous, because incorrect, and who deserves to be put out of business as soon as possible.

As to your questions:
1 That depends. One would assume you would need to set up also tnsnames.ora. One would assume you would also need to change the oratab. But that depends on how strict you are in using proven, Oracle recommended, procedures.

2 Of course the database would require a separate instance. One instance manages one database. If you want to run both the source and the target database at the same time, you have 2 instances. Whether you have licensing issues depends on your current license. I would also recommed reading up on Oracle architecture a bit.

--
Sybrand Bakker, Senior Oracle DBA