Oracle 12c New Features

SYSBACKUP Privilege

Prior to 12c, users needed SYSDBA privilege to backup the database. The new SYSBACKUP privilege allows the user the permissions to perform only backup operations.

The SYSBACKUP privilege allows the DBA to perform RMAN backup commands without additional privileges. Using this new role in 12c, you can segregate Administration and Backup operations.

With RMAN you have same authentication options that are available with SQL*Plus, which are Operating system authentication and password file authentication.

To connect to RMAN using Operating system Authentication Authentication with the SYSBACKUP Privilege use:
$ rman target ' "/ as sysbackup" '

Authentication with the SYSDBA Privilege use:
$ rman target ' "/ as sysdba" '

You can also implicitly connect using below command
$ rman target /

To Connect to RMAN using Password file Authentication Authentication with the SYSBACKUP Privilege use:
$ rman target1 ‘ “rpd@prod as sysbackup” ‘

Where rpd is the user and should have SYSDBA privilege.

Authentication with the SYSDBA Privilege
$ rman target ‘ “sysd@prod as sysdba” ‘

You can implicitly connect using below command. Where sysd is the user and should have SYSDBA privilege.
$ rman target sysd@prod

Note that SYSBACKUP does not include data access privilege, such as SELECT ANY TABLE. When you don’t specify the role explicitly then the default used is AS SYSDBA.

SQL Interface Improvements

In Oracle 12c, you can run SQL commands in RMAN without preceding the command with the SQL keyword.  You also no longer need to enclose the SQL command in quotes.

You can run DDL/DML Commands from RMAN Command prompt, but note that in order to insert you need to use:

RMAN> Create table emp;

You can SHUTDOWN/STARTUP the database and also can use ALTER commands :