======Overview====== In oracle we have A LOT of backups :) So let's start. First thing first, since Oracle is RDBMS we have couple standard backups types: * Physical - Physical Copy of the data (RMAN, datafile copy, snapshot, etc) * Logical - Logical represantion of data (expdp, csv, etc) For Physical backups, we have also types of the data inside of the backups: Physical: * Full * Incremental (Cummulative, Differential) Physical backups, especially RMAN backups, provide us with a lot of different options like: * Compression * Encryption * Parallelism These options are somhow available also with logical backup using expdp, however not to their full extend. ======Backup Process====== Let's start with the backup process, as before, we have different processes for physical and logical backup. ====Physical==== Physical backup in Oracle, mostly means RMAN backup. RMAN is the ONLY Oracle utility for Physical backup. RMAN is a client utility, so it needs to connect to the Oracle Instance in order to perform a backup. =====Recovery===== Recovery process can be summarized in the following matrix: {{:oracle.gif?400|}}