I am no expert on RMAN, so, I thought I post it here to get some possible solution for a client of mine.

Currently, they are taking "image copy' of rman backups for 9i/10g databases, they are not using rman catalog. As RMAN 9i did not allow image copy, they wrote custom code to generate statement like below for "rman" to execute for all datafiles within a database:

COPY DATAFILE '/opt/oradata/test10g/users_01.dbf' TO
'/rman/test10g/users_01.dbf';

That's how they accomplished rman 9i "image copy". They want to continue the same path on rman 10g but want to get rid of custom code as 10g now allows "image copy". I read some documentation and did limited testing but sounds like we still can't backup the datafiles as it is.  RMAN backups the datafile using it's own naming convention(format command) e.g. datafile users_01.dbf can not be backed up as users_01.dbf in backup destination.

Is there a way to do that and also would incremental backup be possible using the same approach.

I will appreciate any response.

Thanks,

Anil Goel.