Dwight is quite correct about the include/exclude... if you do that, you'll
wind up expiring files you've just backed up.  There are several ways to
handle this, and the topic has been discussed here several times.

Briefly, you could do the "archive the database, backup everything else"
method as Dwight suggested.  Others have defined a separate client node for
the database.  We handle it by dynamically creating a dsm.opt file on the
daily backups that lists all filespaces that are NOT database table spaces
(a domain list).  This is done via a shell script.  In this way the daily
backup never considers the tablespace filesystems for backup, yet they do
not get expired.  For the weekly "full" backup, we simply do not have a
domain list, so all filesystems get included by default.

Robin Sharpe
Berlex Labs



                    "Cook, Dwight
                    E (SAIC)"
                    <cookde AT BP DOT CO To:    ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
                    M>            cc:    (bcc: Robin Sharpe/WA/USR/SHG)
                                  Subject:
                    12/19/01             Re: Help with scheduling
                    02:30 PM
                    Please
                    respond to
                    "ADSM: Dist
                    Stor Manager"







I would use backups (nightly incrementals) to cover op system, application
code (the installed oracle code, etc...)
and I would use "archives" to save all the oracle .dbf files...
This way (as you said) all the open/active oracle files are excluded from
nightly incremental processing.
OH, the TDP product is specifically written to do all this but if you don't
want to spend the money for that
you may either maintain a list yourself of all the .dbf files (and anything
else you might need)
or write some scripts that issue oracle queries to list all the files
associated with tablespaces and go from there...

you can't really yoyo the include/exclude list like that because as soon as
you exclude those files from backup and run one of your weekday backups,
any/all excluded files are expired if they exist !

hope this helps
DWight