Before you create an Oracle database, you need to plan how you will protect the database against potential media or disk failure, and whether or not to enable point-in-time recovery. If such planning is not done, you may not be able to recover the database if a disk failure damages the datafiles, online redo log files, or control files. This module investigates various methods to perform database backups as well as what parts of a database need backing up.
After completing this module, you will be able to:

1. Perform database backups using operating system commands
2. Describe the recovery implications of closed and open database backups
3. Perform closed and open database backups
4. Identify the different types of control file backups
5. Identify the backup implications of the logging and nologging options
6. Describe backup issues associated with read-only tablespaces
7. List the data dictionary views useful for backup operations

The next lesson introduces basic database backup concepts.