Re: Oracle Cold Backup Shared tablespaces

Hi Carol,

Two databases cannot "share" the same tablespace. Do you mean that two different data files, each relating to a DATA tablespace in two different databases, happen to reside on the same disk, in the same directory? If so, that's not a problem (though, as you yourself say, the obscurity of such a layout of files might well be!). Prove it to yourself: select name from v$datafile in both databases, one at a time, and compare the file path and names. No identical filename will appear in both reports. (You can always post back here if you happen to have pulled off the impossible! It should be enlightening!!)

Recovery using cold backups is straightforward. You won't get verification check errors, because the files were copied cold and consistent (assuming you do a nice 'shutdown immediate' and not just a shutdown abort, which would require the online redo logs to effect recovery).

And yes, you'll be able to restore to a completely different server, and completely different directory layouts. The trick there is to get to the MOUNT state first, and issue a whole series of "alter database rename file 'X' to 'Y'" commands to persuade the controlfile to look in the new locations ("Y") and not the old ones ("X"). (Things are rather easier if you've got tracefile backups of your controlfiles... then you just edit the script and manually alter the paths, blow away the old controlfiles, and run the script to create the new ones -with the paths previously edited in the script, the new controlfiles will already have the right settings). Of course, the new server needs to be configured correctly, first. And there are some init.ora settings that would have to be changed first (things like 'control_files' and 'background_dump_dest' and 'user_dump_dest' for example).

But in prinicple, it's not difficult.

Regards
HJR

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"Carol" <cmcalear_at_pulsion.co.uk> wrote in message
news:ecbcb718.0203040754.d3daadc_at_posting.google.com...


> Hi there

>

> I am new to oracle and I am trying to get up to speed very quickly.

> I have recently took over administration of two oracle databases on

> the same server, these two databases share a temporary and data

> tablespace, my question is with regards to backup and restore.  At the

> moment the first database is shutdown and the files are copied to a

> backup directory using a batch file which just copies them using

> operating system commands, once this is complete the second database

> is shutdown and the files are copied in the same way.  Will I be able

> to recover both the databases in the event of a failure or will I be

> told that the temp and data file for one of the databases has failed a

> verification check?  Also the directory structure on this server is

> obscure, would in the event of failure would I be able to copy these

> files to a new server and restore the database?  The databases are

> both running in noarchive log mode.

>

> Thanks in advance