Preface

Standby databases are the most frequently used and most effective disaster recovery solution for Oracle databases. Oracle9i Data Guard enhances Oracle8i Standby Databases to provide database recovery that meets the essential disaster recovery solution for Oracle databases, and also survives mistakes, corruptions, and disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes.

This guide describes Oracle9i Data Guard concepts and helps you configure and implement standby databases that can take over production operations if your primary database becomes unusable.

This preface contains these topics:

Audience

Oracle9i Data Guard Concepts and Administration is intended for database administrators (DBAs) who administer the backup, restore, and recovery operations of an Oracle database system.

To use this document, you should be familiar with relational database concepts and basic backup and recovery administration. You should also be familiar with the operating system environment under which you are running Oracle.

Organization

This document contains:

Part I, "Concepts and Administration"

Chapter 1, "Oracle9i Data Guard Concepts"

This chapter offers a general overview of the Oracle9i Data Guard architecture and environment.

Chapter 2, "Creating the Standby Database Environment"

This chapter explains how to assess and configure a Data Guard environment, set up the standby database, create the standby database files, and configure network files for both the primary and standby databases. It also describes the initialization parameters related to the Data Guard environments.

Chapter 3, "Log Transport Services"

This chapter introduces log transport services. It provides procedures and guidelines for configuring log transport services on a primary and standby database. It also provides guidelines and procedures for configuring data availability modes, network tuning for log transport services, and log transport services monitoring.

Chapter 4, "Log Apply Services"

This chapter introduces log apply services. It provides guidelines for managing a standby database in managed recovery mode and read-only mode.

Chapter 5, "Managing the Data Guard Environment"

This chapter introduces role management services. It provides information on database role transitions, as well as monitoring and responding to events that affect the database role.

Chapter 6, "Data Guard Scenarios"

This chapter describes common database scenarios such as creating, recovering, failing over, switching over, configuring, and backing up standby and primary databases.

Part II, "Reference"

Chapter 7, "Initialization Parameters"

This reference chapter describes initialization parameters for each Oracle instance, including the primary database and each standby database in the Data Guard environment.

Chapter 8, "LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_n Parameters Attributes"

This reference chapter provides syntax and examples for the attributes of the LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_n initialization parameters.

Chapter 9, "SQL Statements"

This reference chapter provides SQL statements that are useful for performing operations on a standby database.

Chapter 10, "Fixed Views"

This reference chapter lists fixed views that contain useful information for monitoring the Data Guard environment. It summarizes the columns contained in each view and provides a description for each column.

Part III, "Appendixes and Glossary"

Appendix A, "Troubleshooting the Standby Database"

This appendix discusses troubleshooting for the standby database.

Appendix B, "Manual Recovery"

This appendix describes managing a standby database in manual recovery mode. It provides instructions for manually resolving archive gaps and renaming standby files not captured by conversion parameters.

Appendix C, "Log Writer Asynchronous Network I/O"

This appendix describes how to achieve asynchronous network I/O when using the log writer process (LGWR) to transmit primary database online redo log modifications to standby databases.

Appendix D, "Standby Database Real Application Cluster Support"

This appendix describes the primary and standby database configurations in a Real Application Cluster environment.

Glossary

Conventions

This section describes the conventions used in the text and code examples of this documentation set. It describes:

Conventions in Text

We use various conventions in text to help you more quickly identify special terms. The following table describes those conventions and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
Bold	Bold typeface indicates terms that are defined in the text or terms that appear in a glossary, or both.	When you specify this clause, you create an index-organized table.
Italics	Italic typeface indicates book titles or emphasis.	Oracle9i Database Concepts Ensure that the recovery catalog and target database do not reside on the same disk.
`UPPERCASE monospace (fixed-width font)`	Uppercase monospace typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. Such elements include parameters, privileges, datatypes, RMAN keywords, SQL keywords, SQL*Plus or utility commands, packages and methods, as well as system-supplied column names, database objects and structures, usernames, and roles.	You can specify this clause only for a `NUMBER` column. You can back up the database using the `BACKUP` command. Query the `TABLE_NAME` column in the `USER_TABLES` data dictionary view. Use the `DBMS_STATS`.`GENERATE_STATS` procedure.
`lowercase monospace (fixed-width font)`	Lowercase monospace typeface indicates executables, filenames, directory names, and sample user-supplied elements. Such elements include computer and database names, net service names, and connect identifiers, as well as user-supplied database objects and structures, column names, packages and classes, usernames and roles, program units, and parameter values. Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.	Enter `sqlplus` to open SQL*Plus. The `department_id`, `department_name`, and `location_id` columns are in the `hr.departments` table. Set the `QUERY_REWRITE_ENABLED` initialization parameter to `true.` Connect as `oe` user. The `JRepUtil` class implements these methods.
`lowercase monospace (fixed-width font) italic`	Lowercase monospace italic font represents placeholders or variables.	You can specify the `parallel_clause.` Run `Uold_release.SQL` where `old_release` refers to the release you installed prior to upgrading.

Conventions in Code Examples

Code examples illustrate SQL, PL/SQL, SQL*Plus, or other command-line statements. They are displayed in a monospace (fixed-width) font and separated from normal text as shown in this example:

SELECT username FROM dba_users WHERE username = 'MIGRATE';

The following table describes typographic conventions used in code examples and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
[ ]	Brackets enclose one or more optional items. Do not enter the brackets.	`DECIMAL (digits [ , precision ])`
{ }	Braces enclose two or more items, one of which is required. Do not enter the braces.	`{ENABLE \| DISABLE}`
\|	A vertical bar represents a choice of two or more options within brackets or braces. Enter one of the options. Do not enter the vertical bar.	`{ENABLE \| DISABLE}` `[COMPRESS \| NOCOMPRESS]`
`...`	Horizontal ellipsis points indicate either: That we have omitted parts of the code that are not directly related to the example That you can repeat a portion of the code	`CREATE TABLE ... AS subquery;` `SELECT col1, col2, ... , col``n` `FROM employees;`
. . .	Vertical ellipsis points indicate that we have omitted several lines of code not directly related to the example.
Other notation	You must enter symbols other than brackets, braces, vertical bars, and ellipsis points as shown.	`acctbal NUMBER(11,2);` `acct CONSTANT NUMBER(4) := 3;`
`Italics`	Italicized text indicates placeholders or variables for which you must supply particular values.	`CONNECT SYSTEM/``system_password` `DB_NAME =` `database_name`
`UPPERCASE`	Uppercase typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. We show these terms in uppercase in order to distinguish them from terms you define. Unless terms appear in brackets, enter them in the order and with the spelling shown. However, because these terms are not case sensitive, you can enter them in lowercase.	`SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees;` `SELECT * FROM USER_TABLES;` `DROP TABLE hr.employees;`
`lowercase`	Lowercase typeface indicates programmatic elements that you supply. For example, lowercase indicates names of tables, columns, or files. Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.	`SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees;` `sqlplus hr/hr` `CREATE USER mjones IDENTIFIED BY ty3MU9;`

Documentation Accessibility

Oracle's goal is to make our products, services, and supporting documentation accessible to the disabled community with good usability. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For additional information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/

JAWS, a Windows screen reader, may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, JAWS may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.