Jared,

I think you hit the nail on the head when you said "Best practice of
course is to make a backup of your database in it's current condition
prior to restoring it."  

Too many recoveries are failures because DBAs tend to forget basics when
confronted with the pressures from management, users, and the
constraints of time (primary key).  I made this mistake once early on. 
Now if I have a possible recovery scenario, the first thing I do is take
a deep breath, get a cup of coffee, and THINK about what I'm going to do
before I ever touch the keyboard.

Absent all that, I still make a copy of the redo logs whenever I do a
backup.  Yeah, you could mess up and apply them inadvertently, but
hopefully you will have practiced recovery scenarios (see "Training a
DBA" by Kimberly Smith) and be comfortable with your tapes, disks,
commands, systems administrator, etc.  At least if you've got them, and
everything goes to h*%$ in a handbasket, you can always give 'them' back
something.

David A. Barbour


Jared Still wrote:
> 
> Dick,
> 
> Backing up the redo logs can have some serious consequences.
> 
> Let's say you are restoring the database files, and a number of
> archived logs to roll forward through.
> 
> Following that, you are going to roll forward through all archived logs
> that are still online, and then through your current redo logs for a
> complete recovery.
> 
> Restoring old redo logs would render this strategy ineffective.
> 
> Backing them up can be a good thing, but it would be very easy
> to inadvertently wipe out the current ones when restoring from tape.
> 
> Best practice of course is to make a backup of your database in
> it's current condition prior to restoring it.
> 
> It would also be prudent to make copies of the redo logs locally
> so you don't have to restore them from tape.
> 
> Jared
> 
> On Wednesday 02 May 2001 07:24, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > Jonathan,
> >
> >     It would appear that your friend has hit upon one of the problems of
> > hot backups that everyone misses and actually Oracle recommends against.
> > That is backing up your online redo log files and doing that LAST.  The
> > reason is that there are more than likely active transactions that were
> > recorded therein and those logs are not available.  Can he complete the
> > recovery, maybe if he has the remaining logs from the active system, I'm
> > assuming he is recovering to somewhere other than his production system.
> > Otherwise his only recourse is OTS.
> >
> > Dick Goulet
> > Oracle Certified 8i DBA
> >
> > ____________________Reply Separator____________________
> > Author: Jonathan Gennick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Date:       5/1/2001 8:55 PM
> >
> > Fellow list members, I received the following email from a
> > reader a few minutes ago. If you skip down to where he talks
> > about backup, you'll see that he's in trouble with a
> > database that won't recover. I've already suggested that he
> > open a TAR, and that he supply more specifics as to error
> > messages and the like, but maybe someone on this list can
> > draw some conclusions from what he's told me so far. If
> > you're good at recovery, have a look at what he says. I'll
> > post his email address later if he says its ok, and I'll
> > pass on any advice/suggestions I receive in the meantime.
> --
> Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
> --
> Author: Jared Still
>   INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
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Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
-- 
Author: David A. Barbour
  INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

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