Thank you John. I didn't ask for an explanation of the RMAN commands or its capabilities, far from it. Can I ask you to re-read my post and try to understand it before replying off-topic? On Fri Oct 29 5:32 , John Thomas sent: >If you want to back up an online Oracle database you can:write a script to generate begin backup... copy all the datafiles and logfiles to the backup device (split the mirrors, whatever)... >end backup for all the tablespaces;switch logfileshope your scripts are correct and did not miss any filesOR logon to RMAN TARGET / and type BACKUP DATABASE PLUS ARCHIVELOG; -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l