Oracle® 11g For Dummies®

Chapter 8. Protecting Your Oracle Database

In This Chapter

• Knowing the threats

• Backing up and recovering

• Getting an introduction to Oracle Recovery Manager

Forget the Boy Scouts. DBAs need to be prepared for anything. In addition to security, protecting your data is done with backups. All kinds of threats are out there waiting to destroy your database. Luckily, you have a number of ways to protect your data against those threats. But first you need to know what those threats are.

Assessing Database Threats

Backing up your Oracle environment involves putting processes and procedures in place to protect the database from any and all type of failures. Creating a backup strategy involves many steps. Unfortunately, you can push no singular button and make everything okay.

A good backup plan can guard against the following threats.

Instance failure

Instance failure occurs when Oracle, as a running program, crashes. The good news here is Oracle has provided a recovery mechanism for this so you get off easy. All you have to do is restart the database instance; Oracle automatically recovers from instance failure. However, you might want to investigate what caused the instance failure in the first place so you can prevent it from happening again.

Oracle code tree

The Oracle code tree has the files that you install when you put Oracle on your system. It includes the database files, any patchsets and patches you apply, and any other tools required to make your application run.

Warning

Losing files within ...