Recover Database until cancel

Is it necessary to perform “recover database until cancel” before using “alter database open resetlogs” when you are restoring a cold backup without a backup of the redo log files ?

shutdown immediate

Restore all backup datafiles and controlfiles (OS copy)

startup mount

alter database open resetlogs;

ORA-01139: RESETLOGS option only valid after an incomplete database recovery

-- have to do this
recover database until cancel;
alter database open resetlogs;

Oracle documentation notes:
“In cancel-based recovery, recovery proceeds by prompting you with the suggested filenames of archived redo log files. Recovery stops when you specify CANCEL instead of a filename or when all redo has been applied to the datafiles.”

Cancel-based recovery is better than change-based or time-based recovery if you want to control which archived log terminates recovery. For example, you may know that you have lost all logs past sequence 1234, so you want to cancel recovery after log 1233 is applied.

You should perform cancel-based media recovery in these stages:

1. Prepare for recovery by backing up the database and correct any media failures – “Preparing for Incomplete Recovery”.
2. Restore backup datafiles – “Restoring Datafiles Before Performing Incomplete Recovery”.
   If you have a current control file, then do not restore a backup control file.
3. Perform media recovery on the restored database backup as described in the following procedure.

• Start SQL*Plus and connect to Oracle with administrator privileges.

sqlplus / as sysdba

• Start a new instance and mount the database:

startup mount

• Begin cancel-based recovery by issuing the following command:

recover database until cancel

If you are using a backup control file with this incomplete recovery, then specify the USING BACKUP CONTROLFILE option in the RECOVER command.

recover database until cancel using backup controlfile

• Oracle applies the necessary redo log files to reconstruct the restored datafiles. Oracle supplies the name it expects to find from LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_1 and requests you to stop or proceed with applying the log file. Note that if the control file is a backup, then you must supply the names of the online logs if you want to apply the changes in these logs.
  Note: If you use an Oracle Real Application Clusters configuration, and you are performing incomplete recovery or using a backup control file, then Oracle can only compute the name of the first archived redo log file from the first thread. The first redo log file from the other threads must be supplied by the user. After the first log file in a given thread has been supplied, Oracle can suggest the names of the subsequent log files in this thread.

• Continue applying redo log files until the last log has been applied to the restored datafiles, then cancel recovery by executing the following command:

CANCEL

Oracle returns a message indicating whether recovery is successful. Note that if you cancel recovery before all the datafiles have been recovered to a consistent SCN and then try to open the database, you will get an ORA-1113 error if more recovery is necessary for the file. You can query V\$RECOVER_FILE to determine whether more recovery is needed, or if a backup of a datafile was not restored prior to starting incomplete recovery.

• Open the database in RESETLOGS mode. You must always reset the online logs after incomplete recovery or recovery with a backup control file. For example, enter:

alter database open resetlogs;