In the previous lesson, we discussed the run command. In this lesson, you will learn the basic syntax for the backup command.

The backup command is issued to start a backup job, after the run command has delimited the job and one or more allocate commands have been issued to establish one or more channels. In its simplest form, the backup command is:

BACKUP DATABASE;

BACKUP type tag (backup_spec1) ...;

The type option is used to indicate whether the backup is a standard backup, an incremental backup (with the keyword incremental), or a cumulative backup (with the keyword cumulative), as described earlier in this course. You can also include a level along with the incremental keyword. If no value is specified for the type of backup, a complete backup is done.

The tag is an optional piece of syntax you can use to specify a name for the backup. This name is included in the information kept in the recovery catalog, so it should describe the purpose of the backup, such as 'weekly_cumulative_backup'. A tag can be reused.

The backup_spec is an optional piece of syntax that is used to describe a backup set. You can specify the information such as the data files or tablespaces that are included in the set or the tag for the backup set. You can have more than one backup_spec for a backup command, but each backup_spec has to be included within a set of parentheses.
The following Simulation walks you through the process of doing a backup with Recovery Manager:

Each channel can be used for only a single backup set.
The details of the backup command are described more fully in the next module.
In the next lesson, you will learn how to create image copies.

Click the Quiz link below to review the allocate and backup commands.
Allocate Backup Commands - Quiz