Starting up a database

This article explains the procedures involved in starting an Oracle instance and database.

First Stage: Oracle engine start an Oracle Instance

When Oracle starts an instance, it reads the initialization parameter file to determine the values of initialization parameters. Then, it allocates an SGA, which is a shared area of memory used for database information, and creates background processes. At this point, no database is associated with these memory structures and processes.

Second Stage: Mount the Database

To mount the database, the instance finds the database control files and opens them. Control files are specified in the CONTROL_FILES initialization parameter in the parameter file used to start the instance. Oracle then reads the control files to get the names of the database's datafiles and redo log files.

At this point, the database is still closed and is accessible only to the database administrator. The database administrator can keep the database closed while completing specific maintenance operations. However, the database is not yet available for normal operations.

Final Stage: Database open for normal operation

Opening a mounted database makes it available for normal database operations. Usually, a database administrator opens the database to make it available for general use.

When you open the database, Oracle opens the online datafiles and online redo log files. If a tablespace was offline when the database was previously shut down, the tablespace and its corresponding datafiles will still be offline when you reopen the database.

If any of the datafiles or redo log files are not present when you attempt to open the database, then Oracle returns an error. You must perform recovery on a backup of any damaged or missing files before you can open the database.

Open a Database in Read-Only Mode

You can open any database in read-only mode to prevent its data from being modified by user transactions. Read-only mode restricts database access to read-only transactions, which cannot write to the datafiles or to the redo log files.

Disk writes to other files, such as control files, operating system audit trails, trace files, and alert files, can continue in read-only mode. Temporary tablespaces for sort operations are not affected by the database being open in read-only mode. However, you cannot take permanent tablespaces offline while a database is open in read-only mode. Also, job queues are not available in read-only mode.

Read-only mode does not restrict database recovery or operations that change the database's state without generating redo data. For example, in read-only mode:

* Datafiles can be taken offline and online
* Offline datafiles and tablespaces can be recovered
* The control file remains available for updates about the state of the database

One useful application of read-only mode is that standby databases can function as temporary reporting databases.