yes it is possible, can be used to see how far down a recovery process you are. Is this a RAC database?
Oracle 9.2.0.6 on 64-bit Solaris 5.8.
We have a BCV setup to maintain a copy of a production database on another server. The BCV is updated every night. Tablespaces are placed in backup mode beforehand and taken out after.
I am told by other DBAs that they have successfully performed the following:
startup mount recover database using backup controlfile until cancel
...apply a few logs ... cancel
alter database open read only;
We do NOT want to open resetlogs. The purpose of this exercise is to see if we can use the BCV copy for reporting, but still be able to recover it further if need be.