Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN), a command-line and Oracle Enterprise Manager-based tool, is the Oracle-preferred method for efficiently backing up and recovering an Oracle database. RMAN is designed to work intimately with the server, providing block-level corruption detection during backup and restore. RMAN optimizes performance and space consumption during backup with file multiplexing and backup-set compression, and integrates with Oracle Secure Backup and third-party media-management products for tape backup.
RMAN takes care of all underlying database procedures before and after backup or restore, removing dependency on OS and SQL*Plus scripts. It provides a common interface for backup tasks across different host operating-systems, and offers features not available through user-managed methods, such as parallelization of backup/recovery data streams, backup-files retention policy, and detailed history of all backups.