Automating Backup and Restore in Oracle 19c and 23ai: Complete DBA Guide
At 3 AM on a Tuesday, our production Oracle 19c database crashed. Corrupted datafile. The application team was screaming. The CTO was on the call. Everyone looked at me.
I typed one command: ./restore_prod.sh PRODDB 2026-02-04_23:00. Twenty-three minutes later, the database was back online with zero data loss. The automated backup and restore framework I'd built six months earlier just saved our jobs.
Manual backup and restore processes are where Oracle DBAs lose the most time. Automating RMAN backups isn't about convenience—it's about reliability, consistency, and being able to restore in minutes instead of hours when production is down.
This guide covers production-tested automation frameworks for Oracle 19c and 23ai. If you're still running manual RMAN scripts or struggling with backup consistency, these patterns will save you hours every week and make disaster recovery predictable.