Oracle online backups -- switching to archivelog mode as necessary?

I apologize for what might be an obvious question, but I've been forced to take on an Oracle DBA role for a few months. I have fair experience with relational databases, but I haven't done many Oracle DBA tasks.

One of the things I'd like to do is implement online backups, preferably without rman.

Every thing I read about online backups makes it sound like you need to have archivelog on when you use them. I'm wondering if I can just turn it on when I want to do a backup.

For example:
[archive log mode is off]

alter system switch logfile
archive log start
[Put all tablespaces into backup mode, copy tablespace data files]
alter system switch logfile [three times, since I have three redo logs] archive log stop
[copy redo log files to backup server/tape]
alter database backup controlfile [...]

Would that work? Is there any reason I have to leave the database in archivelog mode all the time?

Thanks,
Michael P Received on Thu Dec 18 2003 - 19:27:35 CST