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Backing Up Database FilesLocate this document in the navigation structure

Use

You can back up individual database files, tablespaces, or the entire database. BRBACKUP uses the procedures recommended by Oracle for performing online and offline database backups.

To specify database files, you can use the file ID, a generic name, or the full path name. By specifying ID intervals or a generic path, you can back up all the database files that meet these specifications.

  • When you specify all or full, all the database data files (and therefore all the tablespaces) and control file are saved. Oracle temporary files are not saved by BRBACKUP. They are automatically recreated by BRRECOVER during recovery. For an offline backup, a member of every online redo log group is also saved.

  • You can combine the value all with an <object list>. This enables you to back up other non-database files in addition to the database itself. However, we do not recommend this procedure. Whenever possible, save the database files and the non-database files in separate backup runs.

  • The control file can only be addressed explicitly using the file ID 0. It is not usually necessary to back up this file, since it is always backed up automatically whenever at least one database data file is backed up.

  • Online redo log files can only be addressed explicitly using the redo log group number, which must be assigned a leading zero ( 0<n>). To save all the online redo log files, specify the file ID 00. However, this might be required only for partial offline backup. It is not normally required because complete offline backups save these files automatically.

  • All file IDs in the interval specified by <file_ID1>-<file_ID2> must be known in the database.

  • If you use a generic path to define database data files, make sure that this path contains the SAPDATA_HOME directory and an additional generic specification (for example, sapdata<n> directory).

    Note

    If you want to back up, for example, only database files from sapdata1 but not from sapdata0, specify one additional character to make the path name unique:

    /oracle/C11/sapdata1

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