By default, Extract operates in append mode, where if there is a process failure, a recovery marker is written to the trail and Extract appends recovery data to the file so that a history of all prior data is retained for recovery purposes.

In append mode, the Extract initialization determines the identity of the last complete transaction that was written to the trail at startup time. With that information, Extract ends recovery when the commit record for that transaction is encountered in the data source; then it begins new data capture with the next committed transaction that qualifies for extraction and begins appending the new data to the trail. A data pump or Replicat starts reading again from that recovery point.

Overwrite mode is another version of Extract recovery that was used in versions of Oracle GoldenGate prior to version 10.0. In these versions, Extract overwrites the existing transaction data in the trail after the last write-checkpoint position, instead of appending the new data. The first transaction that is written is the first one that qualifies for extraction after the last read checkpoint position in the data source.

If the version of Oracle GoldenGate on the target is older than version 10, Extract will automatically revert to overwrite mode to support backward compatibility. This behavior can be controlled manually with the RECOVERYOPTIONS parameter.