In this lesson, we will discuss the steps to take to create your own recovery catalog. If you choose to use a recovery catalog, you must create it before using Recovery Manager. Normally you will create a new database to store a recovery catalog. In this example, you will be using Server Manager to perform several of these tasks, although you could also use other utilities.
Note: Oracle Server Manager is no longer shipped as of Oracle 9i release 2. All Server Manager text and examples have been replaced with SQL*Plus equivalents.
Additionally, connecting to the database as CONNECT INTERNAL is no longer supported.

SQL> CONNECT INTERNAL/password@tnsalias 

has been replaced by:

SQL> CONNECT SYS/password@tnsalias AS SYSDBA 

When you create a recovery catalog, the first decision is where to place your catalog. The previous lesson mentioned some of the important issues to consider when making this decision. The following Slideshow goes over the steps to create a recovery catalog:

You are now ready to use Recovery Manager. Most of the information that is stored in the recovery catalog is read from your target database control file. As you will learn later, it is important to maintain the recovery catalog by ensuring that it gets backed up on a regular basis and that it is kept up to date with any structural changes to its schema.

You need a password file. Often this file is created during your Oracle installation. My database is called orc1, and my oracle home is C:\Oracle. Thus, my password file is C:\Oracle\database\pwdorc1.ora. This file is not readable and contains the password for sys and internal.
Follow these steps to make sure that your password file is set up correctly. Assume that this is a new installation with nothing in the password file. We will also use your setup for naming in your examples.

1. Delete the file C:\Oracle\database\pwdorc1.ora.
2. Using a DOS window, execute the orapwd utility:

C:\Oracle\bin>orapwd80 file=c:\Oracle\database\


pwdorc1.ora password=oracle entries=20

This command creates a new password file for your database orc1 in the directory %oracle_home%\database. Continue to follow this format. Now you have set the SYS and INTERNAL user passwords to Oracle. It is recommended that you use something other than the usual default passwords.

1. In your init.ora file, add or modify the following entry:

remote_login_passwordfile = exclusive

More information on password files can be found in the Oracle Administrator's Guide, the Oracle release 8.0 guide, or online at technet.oracle.com under the documentation sections.
The next lesson wraps up this module.