Greg, Using LGWR for redo forwarding has a big advantage: How many logswitches do you have per hour? Two, three? How many transactions will there be on average in each redo log file? That is the amount of transactions that can be lost when the primary fails. And of course, Murphy will arrange the failure to happen just before an ordinary logswitch. When LGWR forwards the redo, it will jeapordize just a couple of transactions, or even zero, depending on the mode you chose. You can have the LGWR forwarding redo in synchronous/affirmed mode, and that will guarantee your transactions to be stored on the standby. Asynchronous mode will result in just a few tenths of seconds, or just e few seconds, of redo to be buffered, still reducing the amount of lost data quite significantly. Most of the OLTP systems with Data Guard I set up are using synchronous mode, because the systems and network don't notice any performance loss. I think no data loss after take-over is better than possible data-loss, whatever little that may be. Data loss is leaving the users uncertain about which transactions are lost, taking quite some time to find out and manually recover. HTH, Carel-Jan === If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. (Derek Bok) === Upcoming appearances: * Jan 27, 2005: London, UKOUG Unix SIG: Data Guard Best Practices * Feb 9-10, 2005: Denver, RMOUG Training Days: Data Guard Performance Issues * Mar 6-10, 2005: Dallas, Hotsos Symposium: Data Guard Performance Issues DBA!ert, Independent Oracle consultancy Kastanjelaan 61C 2743 BX Waddinxveen The Netherlands tel. +31 (0) 182 64 04 28 fax +31 (0) 182 64 04 29 e-mail info.dbalert@xxxxxxxxx > If I may ask a similar question, yet not exactly related to this > thread.. > What are the advantages of using LGWR as compared to the ARCH process > for > the transport mechanism of the redo data to the standby database? > > Thanks > Greg -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l