RE: Inheriting a "interesting" recovery process

Which is precisely why I break this OFA rule and name every Oracle DB file with a ".dbf" extension. It eliminates the confusion of the dual meaning of the term "log" for the archived logs, making it a simple rule to let the SAs know that ".dbf" files are important don't-touch-without-asking Oracle files. Even before taking my first Oracle DBA class the ".log" naming jumped out at me.

As I've said before, I do like the vast majority of the structure of OFA, but this and having the datafile mountpoint under ORACLE_BASE (or is it ORACLE_HOME?) are two that I think are asking for trouble.

Rich

-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of stephen booth Sent: Friday, August 04, 2006 9:33 AM
To: jkstill_at_gmail.com
Cc: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Re: Inheriting a "interesting" recovery process

On 04/08/06, Jared Still <jkstill_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/4/06, Guerra, Abraham J <AGUERRA_at_amfam.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Your very best friends are: 'Cold Backup' (hot whenever you can't
do
> > colds) and make sure your database is in archivelog mode if you want
> > full recovery...
>
>
> Please explain why a cold backup is necessary.
>

Clearly you have never heard a system administrator utter the phrase: "But, they were only logfiles. We needed to clear some space." coupled with "We don't backup logs."

With a cold backup you *know* that you can get the database back in a working state, even if some sysadmin has gone nuts and earned themselves a place in a large body of water encased in chicken wire with some heavy weights for company.

I've not yet utterly seen a database lost due to a hardware failure or software bug, I've seen several utterly lost due to sysadmin 'error'. In each case the root of the problem has been that sysadmins have had control of the Oracle servers (because management didn't want Oracle DBAs doing sysadmin work) and have messed in the Oracle directories (or fiddled with the backup jobs) without first consultign the DBAs.

Stephen

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