incomplete recovery question

Hi all,

I am currently working as a Sybase DBA while also picking up some Oracle DBA work load as well. The first thing I must learn is backup/recovery. I am reading the Backup and Recovery handbook and have a couple of questions that I am not too sure. I hope someone can shed some lights on.

In the incomplete database recovery, is it necessary to use the backup control file? In page 272-273, it gives an example with T1 and T2 time. T1
=> full backup, T2 => lost a file. If I want to recover the "lost" file, I
must use the backup controlfile to recover until <time>. However, in another example in page 279 step(2), it gave a checklist and said "you can use the current control file" to do an incomplete recovery.

Someone told me that if I want to do an incomplete recovery, I must use the backup control file because the current control file contains the current SCN which does not allow to be "rolled back" to an earier number which is in the case of performing point-in-time recovery. What confuses me in the second example is that it uses "alter database open resetlogs" at the end. This also sounds logical to me because it resets the SCN in all the places.

Am I confusing myself or thinking too much? :-)

Thank you very much,

Benny Received on Sat Dec 16 2000 - 21:29:08 CST