Oracle Built-in Packages

Chapter 14. Snapshots

Oracle provides a number of packages that let you perform various types of administrative operations on snapshots and snapshot logs. Most of these administrative operations are relevant only if you are using snapshot groups or the Oracle advanced replication option. This chapter describes the following packages:

DBMS_SNAPSHOT

Lets you maintain snapshots and snapshot logs.

DBMS_OFFLINE_SNAPSHOT

Allows you to instantiate snapshots without having to run the CREATE SNAPSHOT command over the network. This package is particularly useful if you need to instantiate extremely large snapshots.

DBMS_REFRESH

Administers snapshot groups at a snapshot site.

DBMS_REPCAT

Performs a number of advanced replication operations. This chapter describes only the DBMS_REPCAT programs that deal with snapshots; all other programs are described in Chapter 15.

Even if you are using PL/SQL’s built-in snapshot packages, you will continue to use the CREATE SNAPSHOT command to create your snapshots.

DBMS_SNAPSHOT: Managing Snapshots

The DBMS_SNAPSHOT package contains programs that allow you to maintain snapshots and snapshot logs, and to set and query package state variables associated with the advanced replication option.

Getting Started with DBMS_SNAPSHOT

The DBMS_SNAPSHOT package is created when the Oracle database is installed. The dbmssnap.sql script (found in the built-in packages source directory, as described in Chapter 1) contains the source code for this package’s specification. This script ...