This blog contains experience gained over the years of implementing (and de-implementing) large scale IT applications/software.

Tag: Block

RMAN 10.2 Block Corruption Checking – Physical, Logicial or Both

It’s an old topic, so I won’t dwell on the actual requirements or the process.

However, what I was not certain about, was whether RMAN in 10.2 (10gR2) would perform both physical *and* logical corruption checking if you use the command:

RMAN> BACKUP VALIDATE CHECK LOGICAL DATABASE;

I kept finding various documents with wording like that found here: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/backup.102/b14191/rcmbackp.htm#i1006353

“For example, you can validate that all database files and archived redo logs can be backed up by running a command as follows:

RMAN> BACKUP VALIDATE DATABASE ARCHIVELOG ALL;

This form of the command would check for physical corruption. To check for logical corruption,

RMAN> BACKUP VALIDATE CHECK LOGICAL DATABASE ARCHIVELOG ALL;"

It took a while, but I found the original document from Oracle here: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/backup.102/b14191/rcmconc1.htm#i1008614

Right at the bottom, it confirms that ordinarily “BACKUP VALIDATE DATABASE;” would check for physical corruption.
The additional keywords “CHECK LOGICAL” will check for logical corruption *in addition* to physical corruption.

So RMAN doesn’t need running twice with each validate command combination.