Hello All:

We will be evaluating the Oracle extensions over the next couple
of weeks, however, I was hoping to get some opinions on the
product.....

What exactly is the upside of using the Oracle agents? Today we
backup near 100
instances and we use simple bpstarts and bpends to bring the db
up and down and to
watch for a # of successful threads before doing so (bringing the
db up or down); and it works well.
The only down fall is that we do have to manually add the
streams/data areas to
be backed up in the file list of the class. This hasn't been to
much of a problem since data areas are not added that "often".

The flip side to our solution, the Oracle extensions, require the
install and
config of the extensions and the creation and daily support of an
oracle
instance (we are not dba's in my group; would have to wait on
dba's from other departments) for a recovery catalog. Not to
mention, it is my understanding that the RMAN catalog needs to be
manually maintained; it
does not expire images as does the NB DB does; then availability
becomes an issue; I have all my masters and media servers to keep
up and running, now I have an Oracle instance to tune. To me,
this is just another point
of failure (the Recovery Catalog) and just another huge piece to
fit into our
disaster recovery exercises. The only advantage I have found is
that the extension will go
find all the data areas associated with a SID and there is no
need to list all
these in the file list. I also understand the there is a "true
hot" backup (I think that is how it is advertised), but today
we simply alter the tablespaces using our method and the db is
available during
that backup time.  To me, the down side of the product for Oracle
is much larger than
the up.

OK, I'm done whining!

I would appreciate any assistance.

Thanks.

Charlie Somogyi
BMS
Princeton, NJ
609-818-3589