There are three types of standby database available in the Enterprise edition of 11g Oracle: Logical, Snapshot, and Physical. This chapter will cover the differences between the standby types, implementation details, and testing/recovery scenarios using both Data Guard and Flashback technologies in tandem for stress testing, hot fixes, and data recovery. Oracle has made further improvements to Data Guard to facilitate the use of standbys for testing purposes—one of these is called Database States. It is a simplified method of turning off the data flow from one standby to another, giving the DBA total control over the process.
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Oracle Standard Edition, which doesn't include the automatically managed recovery capabilities found in Data Guard, can be used for some of the steps outlined in this chapter. The basic concepts are the same, all commands will be carried out with SQL*Plus and shell scripting to transport the archivelogs used for recovery. See...