Rick, Here is how I do it. Run this while connected to the Rman catalog as the Rman user. Provide your database name when it asks for it. This script will select all backups that are more than 90 days old, and will generate a the Rman script to delete those backups from the catalog. You then simply run the resulting script thru Rman and the backups get purged. Feel free to modify any part of this that you need to - it's not copywrited! Hope this helps. set heading off set feedback off set newpage 1 set pagesize 999 set linesize 60 spool Rman_Purge.rcv select 'allocate channel for maintenance type ' || '''' || 'SBT_TAPE' || '''' || ';' from dual; select 'change backuppiece '||bp.bp_key||' delete;' from rc_backup_piece bp,rc_database db where db.name = upper('%1') and bp.db_id = db.dbid and bp.start_time < sysdate-90 / exit Tom Mercadante Oracle Certified Professional -----Original Message----- From: Rick Stephenson [mailto:RStephenson@xxxxxxxx] Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 1:07 PM To: Oracle ListServ (oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Subject: Rman 8i vs 9i question - delete obsolete In 9i rman I can set the retention policy to whatever I want and delete all obsolete backups based on that setting. I cannot find, however, a similar feature for 8i rman. Is there a way to set this, and if not, how does rman determine what an obsolete backup is? Thanks, Rick Stephenson