About Connecting to CDBs and PDBs

You can connect to the root in one of the following ways:

• Connect using operating system authentication

  You are connected to the root as the SYS user with the SYSDBA privilege.

• Connect locally as a common user

• Connect as a common user through Oracle Net Services

To connect as TARGET to a PDB, use one of the following techniques:

• Connect with a net service name that resolves to a database service for that PDB

• Connect locally as a common user or local user with the SYSDBA or SYSBACKUP privilege

Backups of PDBs

When relocating a PDB or cloning a non-CDB as a PDB, you may want to retain the use of preplugin backups. For preplugin backups to be usable in the destination CDB, metadata about the preplugin backups must be exported to the RMAN repository of the destination CDB.

The technique for making the backups usable depends on the type of operation:

• Creating a PDB by cloning a non-CDB

  When the non-CDB is opened in read/write mode, you must execute the DBMS_PDB.EXPORTRMANBACKUP procedure as the last step before cloning. When plugging in the non-CDB as a PDB to a destination CDB, the operation copies the backup metadata of the source non-CDB into the data dictionary of the destination CDB.

• Relocating a PDB to another CDB

  When you unplug the source PDB, the backup metadata is automatically exported. Therefore, you do not need to execute DBMS_PDB.EXPORTRMANBACKUP.

Preplugin backups are usable only on the destination CDB into which you plug in the source non-CDB or PDB.

Syntax for Backup Commands

Although the Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) commands are the same, the syntax used to perform operations on multiple PDBs contains some modifications.

To perform backup and complete recovery operations on a single PDB, you can connect as TARGET to either of the following containers:

• PDB

  In this case, use the same commands that you would use to backup or recover non-CDBs. For example, to back up a PDB, use the BACKUP DATABASE command.

• CDB$ROOT

  In this case, use the PLUGGABLE DATABASE clause in your RMAN commands. The following command backs up the PDB hrpdb when connected to the root:

  BACKUP PLUGGABLE DATABASE hrpdb;
  

  To perform backup and complete recovery operations on multiple PDBs using a single command, you must connect to the root. Use the PLUGGABLE DATABASE clause followed by the list of PDBs on which you want to perform the operation. The following example backs up the PDBs hrpdb, salespdb, and invpdb when connected to the root:

  BACKUP PLUGGABLE DATABASE hrpdb, salespdb, invpdb;