Confusion about recovery from tag

Question

Hi All,
We had a situation where we need to restore and recover to point in time until 24th June. One of our colleagues at first restored the controlfile from 24th June backup using below script..
run
ALLOCATE CHANNEL c1 DEVICE TYPE SBT_TAPE PARMS 'ENV=(NB_ORA_SERV=masterhp003.xxxxx.com,NB_ORA_POLICY=ora_pacerprd01_pacerprd,NB_ORA_CLIENT=orasalxhp603),BLKSIZE=524288';
restore controlfile from 'TAG20130624T004158';
release channel c1;
After that he executed the below script to recover the database.
run
ALLOCATE CHANNEL c1 DEVICE TYPE SBT_TAPE PARMS 'ENV=(NB_ORA_SERV=masterhp003.xxxxx.com,NB_ORA_POLICY=ora_pacerprd01_pacerprd,NB_ORA_CLIENT=orasalxhp603),BLKSIZE=524288';
ALLOCATE CHANNEL c2 DEVICE TYPE SBT_TAPE PARMS 'ENV=(NB_ORA_SERV=masterhp003.xxxxx.com,NB_ORA_POLICY=ora_pacerprd01_pacerprd,NB_ORA_CLIENT=orasalxhp603),BLKSIZE=524288';
ALLOCATE CHANNEL c3 DEVICE TYPE SBT_TAPE PARMS 'ENV=(NB_ORA_SERV=masterhp003.thehartford.com,NB_ORA_POLICY=ora_pacerprd01_pacerprd,NB_ORA_CLIENT=orasalxhp603),BLKSIZE=524288';
ALLOCATE CHANNEL c4 DEVICE TYPE SBT_TAPE PARMS 'ENV=(NB_ORA_SERV=masterhp003.xxxxx.com,NB_ORA_POLICY=ora_pacerprd01_pacerprd,NB_ORA_CLIENT=orasalxhp603),BLKSIZE=524288';
set newname for datafile 1 TO '/asj_pacerqa/data01/pacerqa/datafile/system01.dbf';
set newname for datafile 2 TO 'asj_pacerqa/data01/pacerqa/datafile/sysaux01.dbf';
set newname for datafile 3 TO '/asj_pacerqa/data01/pacerqa/datafile/undotbs01.dbf';
set newname for datafile 4 TO '/asj_pacerqa/data01/pacerqa/datafile/users01.dbf';
set newname for datafile 5 TO '/asj_pacerqa/data01/pacerqa/datafile/base_idx_256k_0101.dbf';
set newname for datafile 6 TO '/asj_pacerqa/data01/pacerqa/datafile/base_idx_6400k_0101.dbf';
set newname for datafile 7 TO '/asj_pacerqa/data01/pacerqa/datafile/base_idx_6400k_0201.dbf';
set newname for datafile 8 TO '/asj_pacerqa/data01/pacerqa/datafile/base_idx_64k_0101.dbf';
set newname for datafile 9 TO '/asj_pacerqa/data01/pacerqa/datafile/base_idx_64k_0201.dbf';
set newname for datafile 10 TO '/asj_pacerqa/data01/pacerqa/datafile/base_tbl_256k_0101.dbf';
set newname for datafile 11 TO '/asj_pacerqa/data01/pacerqa/datafile/base_tbl_6400k_0101.dbf';
set newname for datafile 12 TO '/asj_pacerqa/data01/pacerqa/datafile/base_tbl_6400k_0201.dbf';
set newname for datafile 13 TO '/asj_pacerqa/data01/pacerqa/datafile/base_tbl_64k_0101.dbf';
set newname for datafile 14 TO '/asj_pacerqa/data01/pacerqa/datafile/base_tbl_64k_0201.dbf';
restore database from tag 'PACERPRD_LEVEL0_174_24';
switch datafile all;
recover database;
release channel c1;
release channel c2;
release channel c3;
release channel c4;
The tag 'PACERPRD_LEVEL0_174_24' was also from 24th datafile backup.
Please suggest whether the database was restored until 24th or it was restored to the current data.Please help us to understand.

Answer 1

If you would look up the recover database command in the online documentation,
you would notice the following
nowhere in your code you restored the controlfile, so you are using the current controlfile
nowhere in your code you are using 'set until' and you are not using the 'until clause' of the recover database command
This means you performed complete recovery, until now.
Please spend a bit of time to read the documentation and to understand what they are taking about.
Sybrand Bakker
Senior Oracle DBA