Re: Hot backups vs. Offline Backups

Those people who think that you can't back up an open and active Oracle database are *WRONG*.

If you are running Oracle7 you can backup a database while it is in use.

There are only two provisos:

1. You are running in ARCHIVELOG mode.
2. You issue the ALTER TABLESPACE name BEGIN/END BACKUP commands before/after backing up the appropriate data files.

As long as you ensure that you also take backups of your control files and archivelog files at the same time you will have no problems.

We use no special O/S backup utilities - just the standard VMS BACKUP command which has a clause to force the O/S to backup an open file.

We have been running in this configuration since June and while I have only had to perform one 'live' restore (on a control file) I have performed many practice restores on our test system.

Oracle handles the internal timestamps in the .dbf (or whatever) files, so as long as you tell Oracle you're doing a hot backup you will be able to restore effectively.

As far as I am concerned this is Oracle7's best feature. We no longer have to take the database down or break mirrors every night. We have noticed improvements in performance and we can now run 24x7.

Regards,

Pete

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|  Peter Moore - Database Administrator - MAT Transport Ltd, London, UK

|  pt_at_chaff.demon.co.uk : +44 (171) 410 6373


|  "With a little study you'll go a long ways & I wish you'd start now!"