On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 7:33 PM, Ethan Post <post.ethan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > The two methods explained in the note require the database to be in "MOUNT" > or the tablespace to be offline. I need to this while the database is > available. > Hi As far as I know rman backup as copy can copy online files when DB is in archive mode. See example - I don't have DB with ASM right now but it really doesn't matter where a source file is placed. RMAN> backup as copy format '/u01/oracle/system01.dbf_%s' datafile 1; Starting backup at 21-SEP-10 using target database control file instead of recovery catalog allocated channel: ORA_DISK_1 channel ORA_DISK_1: SID=39 device type=DISK channel ORA_DISK_1: starting datafile copy input datafile file number=00001 name=/oracle/baza/system01.dbf output file name=/u01/oracle/system01.dbf_23 tag=TAG20100921T070644 RECID=16 STAMP=730278536 channel ORA_DISK_1: datafile copy complete, elapsed time: 00:02:18 Finished backup at 21-SEP-10 You can do also rman duplicate if you want to create a running copy of production database - starting with 11g you can do that without backup. -- Marcin Przepiorowski http://oracleprof.blogspot.com -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l