Complete recovery
Complete recovery applies all redo log changes of archived log files and the online redo logs to a backup.
Compleate recovery is usually performed after a media failure.
Complete recovery is possible on
- databases
- tablespaces
- data files
Incomplete recovery
An incomplete recovery only applies a part of the available redo log.
An imcomplete recovery is usually performed after a human error.
In order to perform an incomplete recovery, a backup must be found that is older than the time to which the recovery is intended to be done. Then, the database needs to opened with the resetlogs
option (to reset the logs which creates a new stream of log sequence numbers starting with 1).
Incomplete recovery is also referred to as
database point in time recovery (DBPITR).
Flashback Database might be an alternative to DBPITR if current data files are available.