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I've stumped everyone with the previous question about how rman would rather consume infinite disk space than remove obsolete backups. That leads me to this question:

datapump backups work (I have actually tested restoring them), and they are easy to manage unlike rman (if you want to dispute this, answer the previous question!) so why shouldn't I just disable the rman backups and consider that the solution?

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It is not the fault of RMAN if the person using it does not know how to configure the database.

With RMAN you can:

  • restore your database to any point in time in the past that your backups cover, not just the actual state where the backup was created
  • restore large databases significantly faster (have fun with impdp on multi terabyte databases - especially index building and constraint validation, or tens of thousands of partitions, where Data Pump does nothing for hours because it "processes metadata")
  • backup directly to tape/network/whatever through using 3rd party backup solutions (IBM TSM, Networker, Netbackup, Data Protector, etc.)
  • have a central inventory of backups, have automatic deletion based on it
  • compress backups directly without licensing Advanced Compression option (OK, it is not a true technological advantage)

What you can not do with RMAN effectively/easily (but still possible combined with Data Pump), and where Data Pump shines:

  • restore a specific object (table, package, etc.) or a subset of objects
Balazs Papp
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