Many Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System products use repositories, which contain items that the products require. Repository contents differ by product. Some product repositories use RDBMS, some use file systems, and some use both RDBMS and file systems.

Database Backup Types

You can use several types of database backup, depending on your computing environment.

See the Oracle Database Backup and Recovery User's Guide for more information on backup and recovery for Oracle databases.

Physical Backup

Physical backups are copies of physical database files. For example, a physical backup might copy database content from a local disk drive to another secure location.

A physical backup can be hot or cold:

• Hot backup—Users can modify the database during a hot backup. Log files of changes made during the backup are saved, and the logged changes are applied to synchronize the database and the backup copy. A hot backup is used when a full backup is needed and the service level does not allow system downtime for a cold backup.

• Cold backup—Users cannot modify the database during a cold backup, so the database and the backup copy are always synchronized. Cold backup is used only when the service level allows for the required system downtime.

You can perform a full or incremental physical backup:

• Full—Creates a copy of data that can include parts of a database such as the control file, transaction files (redo logs), archive files, and data files. This backup type protects data from application error and safeguards against loss by providing a way to restore original data. Perform this backup weekly, or biweekly, depending on how often your data changes. Making full backups cold, so that users cannot make changes during the backups, is recommended.

  Note:

  The database must be in archive log mode for a full physical backup.

• Incremental—Captures only changes made after the last full physical backup. The files differ for databases, but the principle is that only transaction log files created since the last backup are archived. Incremental backup can be done hot, while the database is in use, but it slows database performance.

In addition to backups, consider using clustering or log shipping to secure database content. See the Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System Installation and Configuration Guide and the RDBMS documentation.

Logical Backup

A logical backup copies data, but not physical files, from one location to another. A logical backup is used to move or archive a database, tables, or schemas and to verify database structures.

A full logical backup enables you to copy these items across environments that use different components, such as operating systems:

• Entire applications

• Data repositories such as the Oracle Hyperion Shared Services Registry and Oracle Essbase cubes

• Individual artifacts such as scripts, data forms, and rule files

A logical export backup generates necessary Structured Query Language (SQL) statements to obtain all table data that is written to a binary file. A logical export backup does not contain database instance-related information, such as the physical disk location, so you can restore the same data on another database machine. Periodic logical export backups (at least weekly) are recommended in case physical backups fail or the database machine becomes unavailable.

Backup with Lifecycle Management

You can use Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management System Lifecycle Management, which is provided with Oracle Hyperion Foundation Services, to perform logical backups. See the Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System Lifecycle Management Guide.

File System Backup Types

A complete file system backup includes an entire system directory. For example, backing up the EPM Oracle home directory backs up all installed EPM System products. You can also perform file-system backups of these types and frequencies:

• Post-installation—Directories created or modified if you reconfigure products

• Daily incremental—New directories or files or those modified since the previous day (including repository content and log files)

• Weekly full—All files in the directories for which you perform daily incremental backups

• As needed—Data that is modified infrequently