Getting the DBID and Incarnation from the RMAN Catalog

Using the RMAN catalog is an option. There is a long discussion between DBAs on whether should you use the catalog or not.

But because I like (a lot) the RMAN catalog and I generally use it, I assume that most of you do it 😉

When you want to restore from the RMAN catalog, you need to get the DBID of the database you want to restore and, sometimes, also the incarnation key.

The DBID is used to identify the database you want to restore. The DBID is different for every newly created / duplicated database, but beware that if you duplicate your database manually (using restore/recover), you actually need to change your DBID using the nid tool, otherwise you will end up by having more than one database registered in the catalog with the very same DBID. This is evil! The DB_NAME is also something that you may want to make sure is unique within your database farm.

The Incarnation Key changes whenever you do an “open resetlogs”, following for example a flashback database, an incomplete recovery, or just a “open resetlogs” without any specific need.

2016-02-15 09_43_34-Sametime Appshare Highlighter

In the image, you can see that you may want to restore to a point in time after the open resetlogs (blue incarnation) or before it (red incarnation). Depending on which one you need to restore, you may need to use the command RESET DATABASE TO INCARNATION.

https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/RCMRF/rcmsynta2007.htm#RCMRF148

If you have a dynamic and big environment, you probably script your restores procedures, that’s why getting the DBID and incarnation key using the RMAN commands may be more complex than just querying the catalog using sqlplus.

How do I get the history of my database incarnations?

You can get it easily for all your databases using the handy hierarchical queries on the RMAN catalog (db names and ids are obfuscated for obvious reasons):

What about getting the correct DBID/DBINC_KEY pair for a specific database/time?

You can get the time windows for each incarnation using the lead() analytical function:

With this query, you can see that every incarnation has a reset time and a “next reset time”.

It’s easy then to get exactly what you need by adding a couple of where clauses:

So, if I need to restore the database 1465419F until time 2016-01-20 00:00:00, i need to set DBID=1048383773 and reset the database to incarnation 1256014297.

Cheers

Ludo