Oracle Security

What Are the Recovery Options?

There are many different ways in which a database can be recovered:

• As a snapshot in time (from export or file-level backups without archive logging enabled)

• To a point in time (from file-level backups plus archive logs)

• Until cancel (from file-level backups plus archive logs)

For an entire tablespace, you can restore one or more datafiles from file-level backups. From an export, you can restore an entire schema, a table, or a set of tables. Using the import option “INDEXFILE=<file_name>”, you can obtain a script to build an index or set of indexes from an export file.

Backup and Recovery Reminders

Here are a few reminders about the behavior of different types of backup and recovery.

Cold file-level backups performed for Oracle7 or Oracle8 databases without the Recovery Manager, and backup sets created using the Oracle8 Recovery Manager without archivelog mode enabled, allow recovery of tablespaces or the entire database to the point in time when the backup was made. If a backup was made on Monday at 1:00 A.M. and the recovery was performed on Thursday, all data entries, DDL statements, and other modifications to the database done from 1:00 A.M. Monday morning until Thursday, when the recovery was required, would be lost.

Cold file-level backups, hot backups, backup sets, and full image copies, with archivelog mode enabled, enable recovery to be performed to a point in time or until cancel. If a backup was made on Monday at 1:00 A.M. and the recovery was ...