Help on Backup strategy

I have some ideas but need some input from the experts out there.

I have an financial application running on Oracle 8.0.4 in an AIX environment (but soon to be Dynix) which I need to backup up nightly without bringing down.

The problem is that the application also uses transient work files for batch update which are intrinsicly linked to the data. Because of this the database is not running in Archivelog mode. (As any backup needs to include the files at the same point in time as the database).

My thoughts are following

I could switch archivelog on and continually delete the logs until backup time, then

I can switch off the processes which create workfiles for a short time and cause a small backup up on an internal task queue (which is fine).

Switch logs, Hot Backup the database files, backup the transient datafiles, switch logs again and keep the archive logs generated whilst the backup has taken place along with the other backed up files.

Any thoughts out there? Is it possible to switch archive logging on without bringing down the database, or at least switching it from manual to automatic, so all of this could be in a script?

Am I going about it completely wrong and it is much easier? I'm also considering a three way mirror, breaking a mirror and backing that up, but I think I may still have to bring down the database for that, that is the one thing I can't do.

Any help would be appreciated

Phil

pchapman_at_antispam.qspinc.com (remove antispam to reply) Received on Tue Nov 09 1999 - 18:54:45 CST