Finding Incremental Backups (SAP Library - SAP Database Guide: Oracle (BC-DB-ORA-DBA))

Finding Incremental Backups

Use

You find the incremental backup files when using SAPDBA to perform a partial restore and complete recovery of your Oracle database, but only when you have incremental backups available.

Note

Use incremental backups to reduce the amount of redo log files you need to import when you recover the database. After you restore the database you only have to import the redo log files that have been written since the incremental backup. This speeds up the recovery of the database.

SAPDBA attempts to locate the incremental backups by scanning previous BRBACKUP logs (of a specified period). If the backup was performed with an external backup program, SAPDBA attempts to establish a link to that backup program and find the incremental backups in this way.

The information on the location of these backups is important for the subsequent phases of the recovery process.

Note

You can skip the steps Find incr. backup and Restore incr. backup if you want. To do this, select the next step (for example Find offline redo logs) that has the status not finished.

Prerequisite

You have restored the backup files.

You have configured and started SAPDBA. Refer to Getting Started with SAPDBA.

You cannot use incremental backups if either of the following applies:

Data files were first restored from partial backups or whole backups. Incremental backups are based on full backups (level 0), so must always follow a restore using a full backup.
Backups were restored earlier in another Partial restore and complete recovery operation, but the recovery phase was never completed. This means that the information about the origin of the files has been lost. This also applies when corrupt or missing files were restored with a tool other than SAPDBA.

Note

If you are sure that the corrupt or missing data files have been restored from a full backup then you can still use SAPDBA to search for incremental backups (you search in a restricted interval of time) and then restore them. If the restore fails then you either chose an incorrect incremental backup, or a recovery with incremental backups is not possible.

Procedure

Choose Restore/recovery ® Partial restore and complete recovery ® Find incr. backup in SAPDBA.

Choose Find appropriate incremental backup runs.

SAPDBA uses BRBACKUP logs to find the backups.

If SAPDBA finds incremental backups, it determines the necessary log sequence number.

Choose one of the following to display details of the incremental backup runs found by SAPDBA, choose Show list of found incr. backup runs.

SAPDBA displays the incremental backup runs that it has found.

Select a BRBACKUP run for the restore by choosing Select an incr. backup run for restore.

To check the selected incremental backup, choose Show selected incr. backup run.

Select Return to continue with the recovery process.

Result

SAPDBA sets the Status of Find Incr. Backup to finished.

To continue with the partial restore and complete recovery, perform Restoring Incremental Backups.