We are currently testing the use of incremental Oracle RMAN backups but
we have noticed that the level recorded by Networker is always full.

This causes us concern as the logic inside Networker for protecting
incremental backups to ensure your browse and retention polices are
meant will not work. 

Test Scenario:
 
In our test configuration we setup one full followed by six incremental
backups per week, with a 14 day browse/retention. we ran the first week
of backups okay and the intentionally broke the next full and ran the
other six incremental without a problem. 


We therefore had a scenario where we had 12 incremental backups reliant
on a single full (RMAN view), but in Networker there were no recorded
dependences as all savesets were marked as FULL. Once ran the next full
week of the cycle we therefore lost the first full, as it had expired
but this also meant all twelve incremental backups were left useless.
The end result being we only had a recovery window of one week.

Day of Week                     S M T W T F S   S M T W T F S    S M T W
T F S

Networker Level         F F F F F F F   X F F F F F F    F F F F F F F
X=Failure

RMAN Level                      0 1 1 1 1 1 1   X 1 1 1 1 1 1    0 1 1 1
1 1 1 
X=Failure

We are running Networker 7.2.2, Oracle 10.2.0 and NMO 4.2 on a Solaris 9
server.

I would appreciate your comments/views.

We have looked at using the NSR_RETENTION_DISABLED=TRUE, this would move
the media management control to the RMAN Catalog and may have it's own
headache.

Regards
Kevin

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