Incomplete Database Recovery
Incomplete recovery can mean restoring a database to a specific point in time (date and time), a specific SCN (system change number) or sequence number (archive log). You normally restore all the datafiles and controlfile (only required if physical structure has changed), any archived redo logs but you do not restore the redo log files (not normally backed up).
If you lose all copies of the current logfile group perform a incomplete recovery upto the last log switch, also if you recover tablespaces that are in a different time to other tablespaces, they must be all the same time.
Incomplete recovery is always done in mount mode and will use the controlfile, a incomplete recovery can only be performed if you have SYSDBA privilege. Use v$log_history to obtain the archive redo logs thread and sequence numbers if performing a sequence number recovery.
The sequence for incomplete recovery recover is:
RMAN |
|
RMAN Recovery | c:\> set NLS_DATE_FORMAT=YYYY-MM-dd HH24:MI:SS see below for recovery options |
RMAN Recover Options | set until time ’2007-12-10 11:29:00’ (note: this is based on the NLS_DATE_FORMAT) set until sequence 10305 thread 1; (note: it is one less than specified) set until scn 67543; |
SQL |
|
SQL Recovery | c:\> restore the files in the normal way see below for recovery options Note: When doing an incomplete recovery with SQL*Plus you have no option with the date option it must be yyyy-mm-dd hh24:mis:ss |
SQL Recover Options | recover database until cancel (At random type cancel to stop the recovery) |
Resetlogs
The restlogs clause is required in most incomplete recovery to open the database. It resets the redo log sequence for the oracle database. For recovery through a resetlogs to work, it is vital that the names generated for the archive logs let oracle distinguish between logs produced by different incarnations. This is why you use the %r in the parameter log_archive_format, %r is the incarnation other wise archive logs could be written over.
After a resetlogs there will be a new database incarnation number and the log switch number will be reset. In previous version all old backups and archive logs would have been useless but not any more in Oracle 10g.
Recovering Database Incarnations
Anytime you use the open resetlogs command, the incarnation of the database changes and a new incarnation begins. The previous incarnation is called ancestor incarnation and the latest is called current incarnation. to recover using previous incarnations you
1. Obtain the incarnation key that was current at the time you want to recover the database to
rman> list incarnation; (for this example we will use 2)
2. start the database
rman> startup fource nomount;
3. reset the current incarnation to the incarnation that was current at the point in time that you want to recover to
rman> reset database to incarnation 2;
4. restore the old controlfile and mount the database
rman> restore controlfile from autobackup;
rman> alter database mount;
5. restore and recover the database until the point in time or SCN
rman> restore database;
rman> recover database until scn 1000;
6. open the database after resetting the online log files;
rman> alter database open resetlogs;