Oracle Backup and recovery

Question

new to oracle, I am having a oracle DB which we don't use anymore(version : 8.1.7.4).

I want to take a backup and keep it for few more years(we don't know if we may need something later on)

1 >> What is the best way to take a backup ? 2 >> Can I take the backup and restore it to a newer version of oracle on my local box ?

Thanks, Jack

Answer 1

if you make a physical backup using rman or file copies, you also need to keep a copy of ORACLE_HOME and your operating system. If you want to make sure that you can access your data, an export might be a better choice, if your database is not very big. (more than a few hundred gig). If it is larger, upgrade it to the latest possible release and save that one. Doing so will give you a better chance to start your database again, after a year, without having to restore your operating system. This is enough if you only want sql access. If you also want the application to be able to use the database, the upgrade might not be the best choice.

I hope this helps. Ronald.

Answer 2

When people talk about an Oracle backup, they almost always mean a physical backup-- a physical copy of your data files, your control files, redo logs, etc. It's probably easiest to use Recovery Manager (renamed RMAN in recent versions) to do this if you've never done a user-managed backup before. If you take a physical backup, however, you can only restore it to a machine running the exact version of Oracle from the backup (and a similar operating system). Given how difficult it would be to find 8.1.7 installation media let alone a machine running a supported operating system, that may not be the best approach here.

You can also take a logical backup using the export utility. This generates a single binary file that has the DDL and data for either the entire database or for whatever schema(s) you actually want to preserve. This binary dump file can be imported into later Oracle versions but it will not contain information about things like the database configuration and it would not be possible to roll forward from a backup if later changes are made (thought that doesn't sound like a concern in this case).