Backup vs redo log files

Question

Hi,
Can anyone tell me what's the real difference between a backup file and a redo log file/archived redo log file and the scenarios (examples) when each of them can be used (for example, "......") ? Both are used for database/instance recovery. I have read the concepts of there 2 terms, but I need some additional information about the difference.
Thanks!

Answer 1

Roger25 wrote:
What i still don't understand is how redo mechanism works; I know, redo logs records changes made to the database and it's used to re-do informations in case of a system failure/crash, for example. Ok, let's say I have a huge update, but when the system crash has occured, the transaction is neither comitted, nor rolled back. Then, how this redo is useful? If a system crash occur, all those updates aren't rolled back automatically? So the database state is as before executing that huge update? So in this case, 'what to redo'?No, with the system's crash, the transaction never gets a chance to get committed (and even rolled back) because a commit is only supposed to happen if there is an explicit or implicit commit statement is issued. Now, for the redo , with the statement, a commit marker is entered at the end of the redo stream of that transaction denoting that it's finally over now and for the corresponding transaction, the status is cleared from the transaction table that's stored in the Undo segment in which the Undo information of that transaction is stored. If you have given a huge update, the redo would be very highly required as you should be knowing that it's not all the time that the dirty buffers that are written to the data files unlikely the redo log files which are written every 3 econds. This means, there is a very fair chance that many changes have yet not even propagated to the data files for which the change vectors are now already there in the redo log files. Now, for the sake of clarity, assume that this transaction was actually committed! So now, without those changes be applied to the data files how Oracle can actually show the committed reults when the database next time would be opened? For this purpose, the redo change vectors are required. And for the uncommitted transactions , the applcation of the redo change vectors would keep on updating the Checkpoint numbers of the data files and would eventually get them synched with the control file and redo log files, without which the database would never be opened.
HTH
Aman....