Re: backup disk format

vslabs_at_onwe.co.za (Billy Verreynne) wrote in message news:<1a75df45.0308142155.664bcd50_at_posting.google.com>...
> Peter Nunn <pnunn_at_pncomputing.net> wrote
>
> > I'm after the backup format because I'm thinking about producing a
> > product that can open backup files from all the major database
> > manufacturers, view their structure and report on that (sort of an
> > integrity scanner if you like).
> >
> > I've come to the conclusion that the native formats are going to be
> > hard, but am wondering if the backup formats would be worth a look.
>
> Oracle does not have a separate backup format. Nor does SQL-Server or
> Informix as far as I can recall.

Well, what about those backupset thingies that RMAN makes? :-)

Not only are they binary, they're interleaved copies of the binary Oracle db blocks!

To the OP: There are docs floating about showing the format of blocks within the files, but if you don't already know about such things, take a tip from Deteriorata: "Give up." It will take a number of engineers a number of man-years to figure it all out, and concommitant lawyers, marketers, QA, oh yeah, a product manager and so on. Several million bucks, back-of-the-envelope. Might as well finance a videogame, at least then you could convince investors you have a chance of hitting a homer.  

> Besides the legal issues with reverse engineering these formats,
> there's also the issue of these formats changing between product
> versions.. and becoming increasingly complex. Cracking the data file
> format of Oracle 9 will take many man months.. by which time Oracle
> 10G will be released..

Oh yeah, forgot the maint costs on the back-of-the-envelope! Well, that's just some poor old guy :-)

jg

--
@home.com is bogus.
Or talk to Eyal, maybe he's already got some project like that. :-)