Incremental Backup 

Use

As of Release 4.5A, BRBACKUP supports the incremental backup of the database with the Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN). In an incremental backup, only the changes that have been made since the last complete backup are saved.

An incremental backup strategy saves memory and time and optimizes the performance of the data backup.

This is of special advantage for large database which have few changes on a daily basis.

Prerequisites

To make an incremental backup of the database, you need to use the Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN). For more information, refer to Integration of the Recovery Manager (RMAN) into the SAPDBA Environment.

Activities

To be able to make an incremental backup, you must first make a reference backup, a so-called complete backup (level 0). The complete backup (level 0) of the database backs up all Oracle database blocks that have already been used.

You can then make incremental backups: The incremental backup (level 1, cumulative) of the database backs up all Oracle database blocks that have changed since the last complete backup (level 0).

The following describes a possible backup scenario:

The SAP incremental backup has the advantage that a complete backup (level 0) of the new files is made after each structure change and extension of the database. This means that you do not need to make a complete backup of the entire database.

You have the following options for making an incremental backup: