The difference in size depends on how much your data changes. If the percentage of inserts/updates/deletes is relatively small, then the backup time will decrease dramatically.
As someone else has pointed out, you will repay those time savings at restore time. With small incrementals, the time to restore the backup files may be insignificant next to the time required for the tape library to load the tape and locate the additional backup files. Jared "Boivin, Patrice J" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/19/2003 11:24 AM Please respond to ORACLE-L To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> cc: Subject: Veritas Agent for Oracle / incremental backups vs. hot backups My manager asked me to assess how much smaller our backups would be if we were doing incremental backups of our database files, instead of the usual hot backups. We are running 8i on UNIX. I know that the answer is "it depends" and "you can't really know 'till you try", but we are just looking for a ballpark figure, perhaps in percentages. Our databases are between OLTP and DSS, closer to DSS environment, this being a scientific site. Thanks. Patrice Boivin Systems Analyst (Oracle Certified DBA) Systems Admin & Operations | Admin. et Exploit. des systèmes Technology Services | Services technologiques Informatics Branch | Direction de l'informatique Maritimes Region, DFO | Région des Maritimes, MPO E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Boivin, Patrice J INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California -- Mailing list and web hosting services --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California -- Mailing list and web hosting services --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).