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Oracle® Database Backup and Recovery Reference
10g Release 2 (10.2)

Part Number B14194-02
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Conventions Used in this Reference

This section explains the conventions used in this chapter including:

RMAN Text Conventions

The text in this reference adheres to the following conventions:

  • UPPERCASE monospace : Calls attention to RMAN keywords, SQL keywords, column headings in tables and views, and initialization parameters.

  • lowercase monospace : Calls attention to variable text in RMAN examples.

  • italics : Calls attention to RMAN or SQL placeholders, that is, text that should not be entered as-is but represents a value to be entered by the user.

RMAN Command Format, Syntax Diagrams and Notation

This section describes the conventions for RMAN command syntax.

Format of RMAN Commands

The RMAN language is free-form. Keywords must be separated by at least one white space character (such as a space, tab, or line break). An RMAN command starts with a keyword corresponding to one of the commands described in Chapter 2, "RMAN Commands", followed by arguments and ending with a semicolon, as shown in the syntax diagrams. A command can span multiple lines.

A comment can be inserted by using a # character at any point in a line. After the # character, the remainder of the line is ignored. For example:

# run this command once each day
BACKUP INCREMENTAL LEVEL 1 
     FOR RECOVER OF COPY      # using incrementally updated backups
     WITH TAG "DAILY_BACKUP"  # daily backup routine
     DATABASE; 
      

Syntax Diagrams

This reference uses syntax diagrams to show Recovery Manager commands. These syntax diagrams use lines and arrows to show syntactic structure, as shown in the following example for the RMAN CATALOG command.

lcatalog::=

Description of catalog.gif follows
Description of the illustration catalog.gif

This section describes the components of syntax diagrams and gives examples of how to write RMAN commands. Syntax diagrams are made up of these items:

Keywords

Keywords have special meanings in Recovery Manager syntax. In the syntax diagrams, keywords appear in rectangular boxes and an uppercase font, like the word CATALOG in the example diagram. When used in text and code examples, RMAN keywords appear in uppercase, monospace font, for example, CATALOG DATAFILECOPY. You must use keywords in RMAN statements exactly as they appear in the syntax diagram, except that they can be either uppercase or lowercase.

Placeholders

Placeholders in syntax diagrams indicate non-keywords. In the syntax diagrams, they appear in ovals, as in the word integer in the example diagram. When described in text, RMAN placeholders appear in lowercase italic, for example, 'filename'. Placeholders are usually:

  • Names of database objects (tablespace_name)

  • Oracle datatype names (date_string)

  • Subclauses (datafileSpec)

When you see a placeholder in a syntax diagram, substitute an object or expression of the appropriate type in the RMAN statement. For example, to write a DUPLICATE TARGET DATABASE TO 'database_name' command, use the name of the duplicate database you want to create, such as dupdb, in place of the database_name placeholder in the diagram.

Some placeholder values are enclosed in required or optional quotes. The syntax diagrams show single quotes, though in all cases double quotes are also legal in RMAN syntax. For example, you specify either 'filename' or "filename". For the SQL command, it is recommended that you use double quotes because the SQL statement itself may also contain a quote, and the most common type of quote in a SQL statement is a single quote. Single and double quotes do not mean the same in SQL as they do in RMAN.

The only system-independent, legal environment variables in RMAN quoted strings are ? for the Oracle home and @ for the SID. However, you can use operating system specific environment variables on the target system within quoted strings. The environment variables are interpreted by the database server and not the RMAN client.

The following table shows placeholders that appear in the syntax diagrams and provides examples of the values you might substitute for them in your statements.

Placeholder Description Examples
Quoted strings such as 'filename', 'tablespace_name', 'channel_name', 'channel_parms' A string of characters contained in either single or double quotes. A quoted string may contain white space, punctuation, and RMAN and SQL keywords. "?/dbs/cf.f"

'dev1'

Nonquoted strings such as channel_id, tag_name, date_string A sequence of characters containing no white space and no punctuation characters and starting with an alphabetic character. ch1
integer Any sequence of only number characters. 67843

RMAN Reserved Words

The RMAN language contains a number of reserved words, which are or have been in the past used in RMAN commands. The following table lists all of the current reserved words.

Reserved Word Reserved Word Reserved Word Reserved Word Reserved Word Reserved Word

ABORT

CONSISTENT

FORMAT

MAXPIECESIZE

PLSQL

SETLIMIT

AFFINITY

CONTROLFILE

FROM

MAXSEQ

PLUS

SETSIZE

AFTER

CONTROLFILECOPY

FULL

MAXSETSIZE

POLICY

SHOW

ALL

COPIES

G

MAXSIZE

POOL

SHUTDOWN

ALLOCATE

COPY

GET

MISC

PRINT

SINCE

ALTER

CORRUPTION

GROUP

MOUNT

PROXY

SIZE

AND

CREATE

HIGH

MSGLOG

PUT

SKIP

APPEND

CROSSCHECK

HOST

MSGNO

QUIT

SLAXDEBUG

ARCHIVELOG

CUMULATIVE

ID

NAME

RATE

SNAPSHOT

AT

CURRENT

IDENTIFIER

NEED

RCVCAT

SPFILE

ATALL

DATABASE

IMMEDIATE

NEW

RCVMAN

SPOOL

AUTOBACKUP

DATAFILE

INACCESSIBLE

NEW-LINE

READONLY

SQL

AUTOLOCATE

DATAFILECOPY

INCARNATION

NEWNAME

READRATE

STANDBY

AUXILIARY

DAYS

INCLUDE

NOCATALOG

RECOVER

STARTUP

AUXNAME

DBA

INCREMENTAL

NOCFAU

RECOVERABLE

STEP

AVAILABLE

DBID

INPUT

NOCHECKSUM

RECOVERY

SUMMARY

BACKED

DEBUG

IO

NOEXCLUDE

REDUNDANCY

SWITCH

BACKUP

DEFAULT

JOB

NOFILENAMECHECK

REGISTER

TABLESPACE

BACKUPPIECE

DEFINE

K

NOFILEUPDATE

RELEASE

TAG

BACKUPSET

DELETE

KBYTES

NOKEEP

RELOAD

TARGET

BEFORE

DESTINATION

KEEP

NOLOGS

REMOVE

TEST

BETWEEN

DEVICE

LEVEL

NOMOUNT

RENORMALIZE

THREAD

BLOCK

DISK

LIBNAME

NONE

REPLACE

TIME

BLOCKRECOVER

DISKRATIO

LIBPARM

NOPROMPT

REPLICATE

TIMEOUT

BLOCKS

DISPLAY

LIBRARY

NOREDO

REPORT

TIMES

BY

DORECOVER

LIBTEXT

NORMAL

RESET

TO

CANCEL

DROP

LIKE

NOT

RESETLOGS

TRACE

CATALOG

DUMP

LIMIT

NULL

RESTART

TRANSACTIONAL

CHANGE

DUPLEX

LIST

OBSOLETE

RESTORE

TXT

CHANNEL

DUPLICATE

LOG

OF

RESYNC

TYPE

CHARSET

ECHO

LOGFILE

OFF

RETENTION

UNAVAILABLE

CHECK

EXCLUDE

LOGICAL

OFFLINE

REUSE

UNCATALOG

CLEAR

EXECUTE

LOGS

ON

RPC

UNLIMITED

CLONE

EXIT

LOGSCN

ONLY

RPCTEST

UNRECOVERABLE

CLONENAME

EXPIRED

LOGSEQ

OPEN

RUN

UNTIL

CLONE_CF

FILE

LOW

OPTIMIZATION

SAVE

UNUSED

CMDFILE

FILES

M

ORPHAN

SCHEMA

UP

COMMAND

FILESPERSET

MAINTENANCE

PACKAGES

SCN

UPGRADE

COMPATIBLE

FINAL

MASK

PARALLELISM

 


VALIDATE

COMPLETED

FOR

MAXCORRUPT

PARMS

SEND

VERBOSE

CONFIGURE

FORCE

MAXDAYS

PFILE

SEQUENCE

WINDOW

CONNECT

FOREVER

MAXOPENFILES

PIPE

SET

 



If you must use one of the reserved words as an argument to an RMAN command (for example, as a filename, tablespace name, tag name, and so on), surround it with quotes. Otherwise, RMAN cannot parse your command correctly and generates an error. These are examples of correct and incorrect commands that use RMAN reserved words with quotes:

ALLOCATE CHANNEL backup DEVICE TYPE DISK;         # incorrect
ALLOCATE CHANNEL 'backup' DEVICE TYPE DISK;       # correct
BACKUP DATABASE TAG full;                         # incorrect
BACKUP DATABASE TAG 'full';                       # correct

In general, you should avoid using reserved words in ways that conflict with their primary meaning in the RMAN command language.