backing up archive logs on Win2K

Hi,

I'm running 8.1.6 on Windows 2000 Server. Thus far we have been doing cold backups of the database and I am designing a process that will automatically do a hot backup every night, copy the datafiles and archived logs to a separate server where they will then be zipped and picked up by a nightly tape backup process. I'm just practicing now on a scratch server, however,this is the first time I have ever tried a hot backup.

For diskspace reasons, I'm trying to miminize the number of archived redo logs I keep on the server.

I'm reading the Oracle DBA Handbook and it says that after I've done the hot backup of the datafiles, I should:

1. stop the archiver process in oracle
2. record the names of the archived log files from my archive log dest dir.
3. resume the archiver process in oracle
4. copy/backup the files from step 2.
5. delete the files from step 2.

If I were using a normal programming language like C++, java or PL/SQL this would be very straight forward and easy, however, I'm trying to do this in a DOS Batch file and I simply don't know how to store a list of file names somewhere and then subsequently loop on them (for the step 4 and 5).

I thought that perhaps instead of simply getting the list of files in step 2, I would just go to step 4 and copy the files and then after that resume the archiver process. I assume that you don't want that process stopped for too long which is why the book stated to get the file list and then quickly resume the archiver process. Can someone confirm? What are the consequences of having a live system running with the archiver process down for too long? Will the database pause? or will the instance crash?

Is there a way to get a list of the files in the archive log dir from an oracle table? Are the file names stored in there somewhere? I would then be able to do this with a combination of pl/sql and host commands.

Appreciate any help

Thanks,
Gavin Received on Mon Jan 07 2002 - 23:58:22 CST