Backing up Database Files 

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

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. For an offline backup, a file is also saved for every online redo log group.
• 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 is really only required for 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, note that this path must contain the SAPDATA_HOME directory and an additional generic specification (for example, sapdata<n> directory).

See also backup_mode or -m|-mode.