Oracle in a Nutshell

Determining the files to back up

Because your Oracle database is always changing, your first step in performing a user-managed backup is to determine the files you will need to back up. You can identify these files by running queries against the various V$ views, as shown in Table 15-2.

Table 15-2. V$ views used in user-managed backup

Type of file	V$ view	SQL
Datafile	V$DATAFILE	SELECT NAME FROM V$DATAFILE;
Online redo log files	V$LOGFILE	SELECT MEMBER FROM V$LOGFILE;
Archived redo log files	V$ARCHIVED_LOG	SELECT THREAD#, SEQUENCE#, NAME FROM V$ARCHIVED_LOG;
Control files	V$CONTROLFILE	SELECT NAME FROM V$CONTROLFILE;

Make sure to save a list of the datafiles and archived log files with the control file. The structure of your database may change between the time you make your backup and the time you have to use it, in which case the current control file for that database might not match up with the files you backed up.

When performing a user-managed backup, you need to back up four types of files:

• Datafiles

• Log files

• Control files

• Miscellaneous files

Because you need all of these types of files for recovery operations, make sure that your user-managed backup routines include backups of all four file types.