Oracle RMAN - Restoring from Incremental Backup

[GregE]

I know this is an Oracle RMAN question but many of you have your hands in that as well. I'm curious about restoring from differential or cumulative backup.

Say I take a Level 0 Incremental (full backup of any table that has been changed) on Sunday. Then I take a Level 1 incremental (Differential) nightly Monday, Tues, Wed, etc. If on Thursday afternoon I restore the database, and I want the most recent, do I just do a normal "restore database" without specifiying anything? Will RMAN know to restore the Sunday Level 0, and then Mon, Tues, and Wed differentials? I've searched for that info and I can't seem to find that.

Also, if I were to tell it a timestamp, such as "set until time 'Jan 18 2011 11:40:00" and that is Tues, I think that's all I need to do and RMAN knows what it has restore. I'm pretty sure I don't need to restore the Sunday Level 0 then "apply" each differential. I think because I don't see that info anywhere, that's not how it's done, and instead it's RMAN that knows what it needs to go get and restore based on the date supplied or most recent if no date is supplied.

Can someone confirm my assumptions?

(same for Level 1 Cumulative)

 

[mahmurth]

As per my knowledge, When you perform a restore of your db on thrusday, first thing it will restore the full backup which was performed on Sunday (L0) and will restore all the data that was changed still wednesday from L1 backup. This info will be stored in RMAN catlog from which it pulls the info and restores the data and will restore the all the data without specifying any date or time. This is wht we hv done

correct me if wrong

 

[GregE]

That is what I am thinking. RMAN knows what it needs to restore based on the date it's told to restore. (or most recent) Thanks for the reply.