About the types of NetBackup for Oracle BLI backups
NetBackup performs BLI backups with Automatic Full Backup, Automatic Differential Incremental Backup, and Automatic Cumulative Incremental Backup schedules.
If a user initiates a backup and the proxy schedule name is not specified on the request with the NB_ORA_PC_SCHED environment variable, the NetBackup server starts an Full Backup schedule by default.
NetBackup for Oracle checks that a full backup was performed before it proceeds with an incremental backup. If the NetBackup scheduler or user initiates an incremental backup, and NetBackup for Oracle finds no record of a full backup using the same policy, it performs a full backup.
To ensure that it has a proper set of images to restore, NetBackup performs a full backup when it encounters the following situations:
If the number of backup streams that is specified changed from the previous backup. This change can be made in the NB_ORA_PC_STREAMS environment variable.
If NetBackup does not have a valid full backup image for the same policy in its database. For example, this situation can occur if images were expired.
If a new file was added to or deleted from the list of files for an incremental backup.
NetBackup for Oracle always initiates a full backup under these conditions, even if you want to perform an incremental backup.