Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2-6. Cycling redo logs
Naming conventions for redo logs
The operating system names for the various files that make up a database are very
important—at least to humans, who sometimes have to identify these files by their
names. If you are not using Oracle Managed Files, you should use naming conventions
that capture the purpose and some critical details about the nature of the file. Here's one
possible convention for the names of the actual redo logfiles shown in
Figure 2-6
:
redog1m1.log, redog1m2.log, ...
The
redo
prefix and
.log
suffixes indicate that this is redo log information. The
g1m1
and
g1m2
character strings capture the group and member numbers. This convention
is only an example; it's best to set conventions that you find meaningful and stick to
them.
Archived redo logs
You may be wondering how to avoid losing the critical information in the redo log when
Oracle cycles over a previously used redo log.
There are actually two ways to address this. The first is quite simple: you don't avoid
losing the information and you suffer the consequences in the event of a failure. You
will lose the history stored in the redo file when it is overwritten. If a failure occurs that
