Tales From A Lazy Fat DBA

Prior to version 10g, however, incremental backups required a scan of an entire datafile to detect which blocks in it had changed. For very large databases, this made the time required for incrementals not much better than for full backups, even though space was saved.

Change Tracking, sometimes called Block Change Tracking, provides a solution by recording to a separate Change Tracking file which blocks have changed. The changes are written in real time by a background process CTWR (Change Tracking Writer).

The first level 0 incremental backup still requires a complete scan. Thereafter, the Change Tracking file is consulted during backups and the required blocks are accessed directly.

To create the Change Tracking file and enable Change Tracking, make sure the database is either open or mounted. Then issue an ALTER DATABASE command:

ALTER DATABASE
ENABLE BLOCK CHANGE TRACKING
USING FILE <pathname>;

where <pathname> is the operating system pathname to the location where you want the Change Tracking file to be stored. (If you have Oracle Managed Files enabled, the USING clause is optional, and the file will be created in the directory pointed to by DB_CREATE_FILE_DEST.)