New Flashback Features

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listing of all global scripts. Also, the list all script names command provides a listing of all scripts in the recovery catalog.

To execute the stored scripts, use the execute script or execute global script command. It is possible for a private and a global script with the same name to exist. In this case, the execute script command executes the private script first; if a private script does not exist, then it executes the global script. A global script is the only script executed when the execute global script command is used.

New Flashback Features

Oracle Database 10g offers some new features associated with flashback query. The first is Flashback Database, which allows you to flash back the entire database to a specific point in time. The second feature is Flashback Drop, which allows you to undrop an object in the Oracle Database 10g database. We will also look at flashback version query, which allows you to look at a set of changes that have occurred in the database between two sets of times. Also, Oracle Database 10g allows you to configure a tablespace for guaranteed retention, ensuring that the undo in the tablespace will be retained. The following sections discuss these features in more detail.

Flashback Database

Flashback query is a very powerful feature in Oracle Database that was introduced in Oracle9i and enhanced in Oracle9i Release 2. Now, Oracle Database 10g offers even more functionality in the form of Flashback Database. Flashback Database allows you to flash back the entire database to a specific point in time. This can be useful to resolve problems such as logical data corruption that might be caused by wayward application code. Also, Flashback Database can help in the resolution of user errors that might cause the loss or unintentional change in data (we all know that never happens!).

NOTE
Flashback Database is not a means of recovering the database in the event of some physical loss, or recovering from some form of physical corruption.

One of the principle benefits of Flashback Database is that it can be a much faster method of recovering data than other recovery methods (e.g., via tablespace point-in-time recovery or logical backups or Log Miner). Let's look in a bit more