Help: How to restore a database scheme from a *.ora file?

Mark D Powell

Geeky, people cannot help you do not clearly define the problem and provide all related information usually in the form of copy and past of the actual commands ran, response received, etc....

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Is the file fair.ora a text file, that is, can you read the contents using a text editor like vi or notepad?  If so, is it in a format something like xxxx,1234,yyyyy,n,zzz where the comma might be '|' or a tab character.  If yes, then that is a delimited file and you can probably use sqlldr to insert the data into the target table.  See the Utilities manual for your version of Oracle.

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If fair.ora is not a text file then you need to know how it was created.  True backups are point in time copies of Oracle database data files made either using rman or manually usually with the database placed into backup mode.  In either case forward recovery of the database which means reapplying the archived redo logs is usually required after restoring the file.  Also a database file normally includes more than one table so you would likely also be overlaying the contents of numerous other tables if this is in fact a backup of a database file.  Wiping out other tables to restore the contents of just one file may not be acceptable to the owners of the other tables involved.

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It might be a good idea to perform a head on fair.ora as the result may identify what kind of file you are dealing with (character data, exp file, expdp, etc ...)

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HTH -- Mark D Powell --

Hemant K Chitale

>What I can tell you is that all Oracle databases are supposed to make an export (I don't know what it is) and it is getting backed up daily by something called Comvault

Which would mean that you'd need (1) restore the export from Comvault if it is no longer on disk (2) to import the data.

We don't know if the export is a full database export or a schema export (if you've come from a non-Oracle -- e.g. MS SQLServer -- backround : note that a database in oracle consists of multiple schemas).

The restore command requires knowledge of the Comvault utilities.

The import command required to import the table depends on how the export was done.

Hemant K Chitale

andrewmy

If this is a real emergency get an Oracle consultant in and sit beside him and (hopefully) learn. Honestly. If time is critical there is too much you do not know about Oracle to effect a recovery with the incomplete information that you possess. With incomplete information, you need somebody who is experienced enough to investigate to find out the actual situation, formulate a recovery strategy and execute it. There are too many unknowns for generic advice.

Or we could keep asking you to check this or that for next few days to find out the situation before we can suggest any plan of action.

V. A. Nagpure

If the 'fair.ora' is a binary file then you can use the 'list backup' command of RMAN and then search for 'fair.ora' in the backuppiece names to verify whether it's a RMAN backup file...