Standby data update/refresh

Question

Oracle 10.2.0.1.0, Redhat 4
I have setup Standby db by using 'Data Guard Concepts and Admin' manual.
1. Looks like my standby db is updated only when redo switch takes place on the primary.
Is there not a way to get standby data to be updated quicker like every 2 minutes or after every commit?
2. If I mess up data on standby is there a nice and quick way to refresh all data from primay.
(Advance) Thanks for any help/suggestion.

Answer 1

If you want real-time apply, you would need to have standby redo logs configured
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14239/standby.htm#i72459
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14239/log_apply.htm#i1023371
If you're interested primarily in non-disaster recovery uses, I'd tend to suggest looking at Active Data Guard in 11g. While you certainly can use a logical standby for test databases, I'm not sure that it makes a whole lot of sense to do so unless you are interested in also using the disaster recovery approach. For most situations, it's going to be easier to just restore a backup of the production database to the test server every month or two (which also verifies the backup) than to try to maintain a logical standby as the test server and to deal with flashing back the test server to a point in time to re-apply changes. I'd also be hesitant to have a situation where my production database was buffering a pile of changes for days or weeks at a time because users were in the middle of a test cycle and didn't want their changes backed out.
Justin