RMAN checksyntax function

I was looking at the RMAN DEBUG options and came across the CHECKSYNTAX function which I had not used before.

Firstly a quick recap on the DEBUG option.

This can be called using the following syntax

rman target / catalog rman12g1/xxxx@rmancat debug trace=rmantrace.log cmdfile=backup.rcv

or

rman target / catalog rman12g1/xxxx@rmancat debug trace=rmantrace.log then run RMAN> @backup.rcv (or just type in your run block of commands)

There are a number of options to DEBUG and one of the error messages lists them out quite neatly

RMAN-01009: syntax error: found "integer": expecting one of: "all, duplicate, recover, restore, resync, sql"

To be honest if I was tracing I would just stick with the DEBUG=ALL format. The DEBUG=SQL gives all the internal commands that RMAN calls and could be interesting if you were doing a deep dive into RMAN functionality

Anyway, back to the CHECKSYNTAX option.

I run it against the edited version of the command file used above

rman target / catalog rman12g1/xxxx@rmancat checksyntax cmdfile=backup.rcv 

Recovery Manager: Release 12.1.0.2.0 - Production on Wed Dec 28 10:22:20 2016
Copyright (c) 1982, 2014, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
connected to target database: T12TEST (DBID=1543168240)
connected to recovery catalog database

RMAN> run {
2> sql "alter session set nls_date_format=''YYYY-MM-DD:HH24:MI:SS''";
3> allocate channel c1 device type disk format '/app/oracle/backup/backup_db_%d_S_%s_P_%p_T_%t';
4> allocate channel c2 device type disk format '/app/oracle/backup/backup_db_%d_S_%s_P_%p_T_%t';
5> backup database INCLUDE CURRENT CONTROLFILEs;
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS ===============
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00558: error encountered while parsing input commands
RMAN-01009: syntax error: found "identifier": expecting one of: "controlfile"
RMAN-01008: the bad identifier was: CONTROLFILEs
RMAN-01007: at line 6 column 33 file: backup.rcv

Note the file backup.rcv has a blank line as the first line which confuses the line numbering

Pretty neat. I edit the file and put a different error in, a much more common missing semi-colon

RMAN> run {
2> sql "alter session set nls_date_format=''YYYY-MM-DD:HH24:MI:SS''";
3> allocate channel c1 device type disk format '/app/oracle/backup/backup_db_%d_S_%s_P_%p_T_%t';
4> allocate channel c2 device type disk format '/app/oracle/backup/backup_db_%d_S_%s_P_%p_T_%t'
5> backup
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS ===============
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00558: error encountered while parsing input commands
RMAN-01009: syntax error: found "backup": expecting one of: "auxiliary, connect, format, maxopenfiles, maxpiecesize, parms, rate, send, to, comma, ;"
RMAN-01007: at line 6 column 1 file: backup.rcv

Overall not a mind-shatteringly exciting find but something that might be of use one day