Recovery Catalog

You don’t need a commercial license to create a Recovery Catalog – Oracle Express Edition will be just fine for this task.

To create the recovery catalog schema in the recovery catalog database:

Start SQL*Plus and connect with administrator privileges to the database containing the recovery catalog. In this example, the database is rcvcat.

sqlplus / as sysdba

Create a user and schema for the recovery catalog. For example, you could enter the following SQL statement (replacing password with a user-defined password):

SQL> CREATE TABLESPACE tools
logging
datafile '/dbf1/tools.dbf'
size 32m
autoextend on
next 32m maxsize 2048m
extent management local;

 

SQL> CREATE USER rcvcat IDENTIFIED BY catalog_password
TEMPORARY TABLESPACE temp
DEFAULT TABLESPACE tools
QUOTA UNLIMITED ON tools;

 

SQL> GRANT RECOVERY_CATALOG_OWNER TO rcvcat;

After user has been created, exit sql*plus and open rman:

rman TARGET / CATALOG rcvcat/catalog_password@XE

RMAN> CREATE CATALOG;

Once catalog is created you can register another database to your recovery catalog. You have to specify in tnsnames.ora how to connect to the recovery catalog before you attempt to register your database.

tnsnames.ora is usually located in the following directory:

$ORACLE_HOME/network/admin

open the file for editing, for example in vi (or notepad under windows), then add following lines:

RCVCAT =
(DESCRIPTION =
(ADDRESS_LIST =
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = <catalog_hostname_or_ip>)(PORT = 1521))
)
(CONNECT_DATA =
(SERVER = DEDICATED)
(SERVICE_NAME = XE)
)
)

close the file and run RMAN for your local database:

rman TARGET /

connected to target database: PROD (DBID=1619241818)

RMAN> CONNECT CATALOG rcvcat@RCVCAT

recovery catalog database Password: catalog_password
connected to recovery catalog database

RMAN> REGISTER DATABASE;

database registered in recovery catalog
starting full resync of recovery catalog
full resync complete

You can repeat the process for all databases you wish to backup using recovery catalog.

If you happen to have newer Oracle version than Express Edition (10.2.0.1) you can upgrade the recovery catalog using the RMAN from the newer Oracle version, from for example 10.2.0.4. To do this, run RMAN on the new database you would like to register with the recovery catalog, but connect to the catalog instead of the database:

rman TARGET / CATALOG rcvcat/catalog_password@RCVCAT

(note that you must add the RCVCAT to tnsnames first).

In order to upgrade the catalog you need to run the command below twice:

UPGRADE CATALOG;

UPGRADE CATALOG;

The catalog structure will be adapted for the newest Oracle version, while still running on the old database.