Lesson 3	Removing a control file
Objective	Remove a control file from a database.

Removing Control file

If you have more control file copies than you need, you may want to drop one. To remove a control file from your database, you can't just delete the file while the database is running. Instead, you should follow these steps:

Identify the control file to be removed.
Make certain that you will have at least two copies left after deleting the file.
Shut down the database.
Delete the file.
Edit the database's initialization parameter file, find the control_files entry, and remove the name of the file that you just deleted from the list of control files for the database.
Restart the database.

The key thing to understand here is that the initialization file points to all the control files for a database . Oracle reads the initialization file whenever you start an instance, and opens all the control files in the list. The following control_files entry lists three files:

control_files = (e:\oracle\oradata\COIN\control01.ctl,

f:\oracle\oradata\COIN\control02.ctl,

g:\oracle\oradata\COIN\control03.ctl)

To delete a control file, you must remove it from the list. You can do that only when the database is completely shut down.
You will learn how to add control files to your database in the next lesson.