RE: Not 100% clear on archive switching..

> It seems to me that Oracle switches redo log from the full to the empty
for
> archiving purpose.
 

Well, the log may or may not be empty but you get the idea. I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually clear the file, it just overwrites it when available. (archived in archivelog mode)  

> Now the background process "ARCH" is in charge with the archiving
> process. Would you explain more?
 

Yes.. I'm not asking about online redo, I want to clarify my understanding of the archiving process and the order in which redo is archived to disk depending on the value of log_archive_max_processes.  

> And again I might not be completely right, but
> LOG_ARCHIVE_MAX_PROCESSES is targetting le number
> of processes, not redo logs.

Yes.. log_archive_max_processes determines how many ARCH processes can run in parallel. Each of which works on an single redo log to archive. (at least that is what I'm verifying.)

Shawn M Ferris
Oracle DBA - Time Warner Telecom Received on Tue Dec 26 2000 - 17:39:22 CST