The choice of a backup and recovery mechanism depends mainly on the following fa

ctors:
Database mode (ARCHIVELOG, NOARCHIVELOG)
Size of the database
Backup and recovery time
uptime
Type of data (OLTP, DSS, Data Warehouse).
The types of backup are
Offline backup (Cold or closed database backup)
Online backup (Hot or open database backup)
Logical export
Logical exports create an export file that contains a list of SQL statements to
recreate the database. Export is performed when the database is open and does no
t affect users work. Offline backups can only be performed when the database is
shut down cleanly, and the database will be unavailable to users while the offli
ne backup is being performed. Online backups are performed when the database is
open, and it does not affect users work. The database needs to run in ARCHIVELOG
mode to perform online backups.
The database can run in either ARCHIVELOG mode or NOARCHIVELOG mode. In ARCHIVEL
OG mode, the archiver (ARCH) process archives the redo log files to the archive
destination directory. These archive files can be used to recover the database i
n the case of a failure. In NOARCHIVELOG mode, the redo log files are not archiv
ed.
When the database is running in ARCHIVELOG mode, the choice can be one or more o
f the following:
Export
Hot backup
Cold backup
When the database is running in NOARCHIVELOG mode, the choice of backup is as fo
llows:
Export
Cold backup