Why control files are needed for restore of hot backup?

From: Daniel Roy <danielroy10_at_hotmail.com>
Date: 21 May 2002 17:48:29 -0700
Message-ID: <1b061893.0205211648.e0a3196@posting.google.com>

Hi everyone,

I have a question which will probably look obvious to many, but I'm just starting with Oracle! If I take a hot backup of a database, using for each tablespace:
- alter tablespace bla-bla begin backup

I copy the tablespace datafiles to the backup directory
alter tablespace bla-bla end backup

I also include in my backup the archive logs generated during the backup.
Now my question is if the datafile structure of the database doesn't change, do I really need the control file to also be backed up? It seems to me that at recovery time, re-creating the control files should be the same result than using a control file from during the backup. My feeling is that in both cases, Oracle relies exclusively on the SCN's of the datafile headers in order to decide which datafile needs recovery, and which one doesn't.

Daniel Received on Tue May 21 2002 - 19:48:29 CDT