If your requirement is to shutdown quickly, here is one solution 1. Find out the process id for the current session from v$process.spid. and run "shutdown immediate" 2.. From a separate session kill all the oracle${ORACLE_SID} processes except the process id found in step 1. This may have to be run from root, to kill bequeath processes. Joseph Amalraj Robyn <robyn.sands@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: Micheal, I understand your position and when I arrived here, I made all the same arguments. I've been told that our legal department insists on a cold backup, and the requirement is non-negotiable. We run full test recoveries on all our major systems on a regular basis and we use the hot backups to do so. None of us doubt that the hot backups are adequate for recovery. So I guess we're not really 24x7, we're 24x7-15 and that 15 minutes is a sacred cow that I need to leave alone right now ... Thanks for the input and if I was calling the shots, I wouldn't do it this way. However, I would still need a script that would shut the database down quickly, possibly for maintenance or hardware issues, so I really appreciate the suggestions provided on this thread. Robyn On 2/27/06, Michael Haddon wrote: > I definitely agree, the shutdown is not the problem, it is doing what it is > supposed to do in order to maintain data integrity and preserve > transactions. The real questions is 'why do you shutdown at all??', I > haven't been forced to perform a cold backup on a schedule in years. I > thought 7X24 really meant 7X24. If the production environment can deal with > the downtime necessary to perform cold backups, then couldn't that time be > used to perform batch transactions or some other necessary task. > > I would recommend spending some time on hot backups and showing your boss > that the software is a little smarter these days and a complete, point in > time/ or some other time recovery is easy. Take a few days/weeks and show > him that you can give him an exact copy of his production system anytime he > wants it. Make him comfortable and your cold backups will be a thing of the > past, otherwise, get another boss! > > Just my .02 > > Mike > -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l