Preface

The standby database is one of Oracle Corporation's most powerful and exciting additions to its Oracle8i backup and recovery solutions. This guide includes the conceptual and task-oriented information you will need to create, manage, and maintain a standby database.

See Also: For general information about backup and recovery, see the Oracle8i Backup and Recovery Guide. For concepts, procedures, and reference material related to the Recovery Manager utility, see the Oracle8i Recovery Manager User's Guide and Reference.

What Is New in Oracle8i?

This section describes new features relating to standby databases in Oracle release 8.1.5 and release 8.1.6.

Release 8.1.6

A new feature in release 8.1.6 enables you to generate trace files that describe archival activity by setting the LOG_ARCHIVE_TRACE initialization parameter (see Determining Which Archived Logs Have Been Received by the Standby Site).

Release 8.1.5

New features in release 8.1.5 include the following:

• Oracle8i provides the means to allow the background archive process (ARCH) or its foreground equivalent to archive online redo log files to multiple destinations (see Specifying Archive Destinations). Up to five destinations can be specified with the initialization parameter: LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_n (where n is an integer from 1 to 5). A destination can be a local disk-based file or it can be a user-specified standby database that is either local or remote to the primary database.

• You can run a standby database in managed recovery mode so that as archived redo logs are generated on the production database, they are automatically applied to the standby database (see Managed Recovery Mode).

• The read-only mode option can be used to make a standby database available for queries and reporting, even while archived redo logs are being transferred from the primary database site (see Testing the Standby Database Without Performing Failover).

Structure

This book contains the following chapters:

Chapter	Contents
Chapter 1, "Standby Database Concepts"	Offers a general overview of the Oracle8i standby database.
Chapter 2, "Preparing a Standby Database"	Describes how to create a standby database.
Chapter 3, "Managing a Standby Database"	Provides guidelines for managing a standby database in manual recovery mode, managed recovery mode, and read-only mode.
Chapter 4, "Performing Maintenance on a Standby Database"	Provides step-by-step instructions for typical maintenance operations on a standby database.
Chapter 5, "Standby Database Scenarios"	Describes common standby database scenarios.

Changes to This Book

This manual is new in release 8.1.6. In release 8.1.5, all backup and recovery documentation was located in the Oracle8i Backup and Recovery Guide. In release 8.1.6, the backup and recovery documentation is divided into the following books:

• Oracle8i Backup and Recovery Guide

• Oracle8i Recovery Manager User's Guide and Reference

• Oracle8i Standby Database Concepts and Administration

Audience

This guide is for database administrators (DBAs) who administer the backup, restore, and recovery operations of an Oracle database system.

Knowledge Assumed of the Reader

Readers of this guide are assumed to be familiar with relational database concepts and basic backup and recovery administration. They are also assumed to be familiar with the operating system environment under which they are running Oracle.

Conventions

This section explains the conventions used in this manual relating to:

• Text

• Code Examples

Text

This section explains the conventions used within the text.

UPPERCASE Characters

Uppercase text is used to call attention to tablespace names, initialization parameters, and SQL keywords.

For example, "If you create a private rollback segment, the name must be included in the ROLLBACK_SEGMENTS parameter of the initialization parameter file. You can view this information by issuing a SHOW PARAMETER statement in SQL*Plus."

Italicized Characters

Italicized words within text are book titles, new vocabulary, emphasized words, or variables in SQL syntax.

For example, "An archived redo log is an online redo log that has been copied offline. You must run your database in ARCHIVELOG mode to enable this feature. If you are using Recovery Manager, you can specify an archived redo log in a backup command by using the archivelog like '/oracle/archive/arc_*' subclause."

Bold Characters

Bold words within text are operating system-specific commands.

For example, "Use the Recovery Manager backup command to back up your database. Alternatively, use the UNIX cp command to copy files."

Monospaced Characters

Filenames and directories appear in a monospaced font.

For example, "The information in the primary site tnsnames.ora file must correspond to the information in the standby site listener.ora file."

Code Examples

SQL and SQL*Plus statements appear separated from the text of paragraphs in a monospaced font. For example:

INSERT INTO emp (empno, ename) VALUES (1000, 'SMITH'); 
ALTER TABLESPACE users ADD DATAFILE 'users2.ora' SIZE 50K; 
run {
     allocate channel ch1 type disk;
     backup database;
}

You can execute SQL and SQL*Plus statements in different environments on different platforms. As much as possible, this guide attempts to provide generic documentation; that is, documentation that is not specific to any operating system or interface. Nevertheless, it is sometimes necessary for illustrative purposes to show how the syntax works at the operating system level. In these cases, this book uses examples from a UNIX command-line interface and employs the % symbol to indicate the operating system prompt.

How to Use This Guide

Every reader of this guide is presumed to have read:

• The beginning of the Oracle8i Concepts manual, which provides an overview of the concepts and terminology related to Oracle and a foundation for the more detailed information in this guide. The rest of the Oracle8i Concepts manual explains the Oracle architecture and features in detail.

• The chapters in the Oracle8i Administrator's Guide that deal with managing the control file, online redo logs, and archived redo logs.

You will often need to refer to the following reference guides:

• Oracle8i SQL Reference

• Oracle8i Reference

• Oracle8i Backup and Recovery Guide

• Oracle8i Recovery Manager User's Guide and Reference