You should be able to restore 7yr old backups w/o a recovery catalog as well - just as long as you have old backups of your controlfile set with proper retention. Regards, Brandon From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Goulet, Richard if you need to be able to restore a database to any point in time in the last 7 years the recovery catalog is priceless. ________________________________ Privileged/Confidential Information may be contained in this message or attachments hereto. Please advise immediately if you or your employer do not consent to Internet email for messages of this kind. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of this company shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it.