Well, a shut database for me means just a bunch of files neatly closed and ready to be backed up... if the logs are lost, fine... if the archived logs are lost, fine... especially if there is no 24x7 needs... if the database needs to be up 24X7 that's a different story... -----Original Message----- From: David Sharples [mailto:davidsharples@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Friday, August 04, 2006 9:43 AM To: Guerra, Abraham J Cc: Jared Still; stvsmth@xxxxxxxxx; oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Inheriting a "interesting" recovery process very poor reasons all a shutdown does is clear out your buffer cache and shared pool making the database have to work hard when you restart it. What does keeping the archive logs have to do with anything. Don't you keep all of them anyway? On 04/08/06, Guerra, Abraham J <AGUERRA@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: Well, the only reason I would do colds is that the database is shut nicely and do not have to keep the archivelogs produced during the backup... also, shutting down the database once in a while avoids having problems with the fragmentation of the shared pool and stuff like that...