Alejandro Vargas' Blog

Oracle Recovery Manager, RMAN, is at the same time simple and complex, it's sintax can be as direct as 'backup database' to make a whole database backup, and as complex as it can be to make possible the most sophisticated and complex backup and recovery tasks.

This post covers a series of tests I did prepare to show how Rman works, the tar of the scripts contained on the guide can be downloaded here.

This RMAN Hands-On guide, once you have configured the environment, can be followed in about 3 hours, it covers the basics of Backup, Restore and Recovery of Oracle Databases using RMAN.

This hands on practice is organized into 4 chapters

• CATALOG
• ADMINISTRATION    
• BACKUP  
• RESTORE AND RECOVERY

• Build and administer an Rman Catalog
• Use different techniques for backing up a Database
• And the most important: How to restore and recover the database in different crisis scenarios

Change Control is one of the most important aspects of managing a production database environment, the back port of this functionality is a major breakthrough, that will make easier to migrate 9i production environments to 10g and 11g.

SQL Performance Analyzer permits to identify SQL
performance issues caused by system changes, the performance analyzer assess the impact of that changes and provide a report that highlight any  differences between the before and after situations.

Database Replay permits to
perform comprehensive change control testing, using workloads taken from production environments. Problems can
be identified and solved on the test stage before implementing the changes on
production.

Whole details of the process can be obtained from Metalink Note: 560977.1

This functionality for 11g has been ported to
Oracle Server - Enterprise Edition - Versions 9.0.1.0  to  11.1.0.6

• 9.2.0.8.0 + one off
  patch 6973309.
• 10.2.0.3.0 + one off patch 6974999