> I am looking for some suggestions on backing up Oracle databases using ADSM.
> The way we do it now, is to shutdown the database nightly and do a cold
> backup. Works good but causes about 3hrs of downtime. What I would like to
> do is shut the database down for a cold backkup weekly and then backup the
> archive logs periodically throughout the week.
>
> Has anyone had experience doing this? More importantly has anyone had
> success recovering from this type of backup. I have seen how fussy Oracle
> can be after a restore and I need to have my bases covered.

We are currently shutting down databases and running incremental backups, but
we are evaluating a product from BMC called SQL-BackTrack. This offers a
number of other options. It can back up Oracle databases while they are up. It
can backup archive logs and subsequently use them to update a backup. It can
also do record level incremental backups, in which it finds and backs up
records that have changed since a previous backup. During restore operations
it can restore from a full backup and then merge in records from later
incremental backups. This record merge is usually considerably faster than
using archive logs to re-enact transactions done since the last full backup.