About RMAN Compatibility Matrix

About RMAN Environment
If you say about RMAN Environment, then there comes the following components.
1) RMAN executable
2) Recovery catalog database
3) Recovery catalog schema in the recovery catalog database
4) Target database
5) Auxiliary database (used for duplicate, duplicate for standby or tablespace point-in-time recovery)

Each component has a release number. Oracle uses up to 5 digits to indicate a version of the release, but only up to 4 are significant for RMAN compatibility purposes. For example, to check the release number of RMAN executable just issue, rman on command prompt like below.
E:\Documents and Settings\Arju>rman

Recovery Manager: Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Production on Tue Mar 2 16:16:59 2010

Copyright (c) 1982, 2005, Oracle. All rights reserved.


Here we see the version is 10.2.0.1.0

Determine the Recovery Catalog Schema Version

Use SQL*Plus to connect to the recovery catalog database as the catalog owner. For example, enter:

$ sqlplus rman@catdb
Query the rcver catalog table. For example, run this query:

SQL> SELECT * FROM rcver;

VERSION
------------
09.00.01.00
10.02.01.00
11.01.00.03
Note that, if multiple versions are listed, then the last row is the current version, and the rows before it are prior versions. In the preceding example, the current recovery catalog schema version is 11.1 and the previous version was 10.2.

Note that for releases 10.2 and later, the last two digits in the rcver output indicate patch level. For earlier releases, they are always zeros.

RMAN Compatibility Matrix
In general, the rules of RMAN compatibility are as follows:

1) You can create an 8.x or 9.x recovery catalog schema in any Oracle database release 8.1.x (or higher), and a 10.0.1 (or higher) recovery catalog schema in any Oracle database release 9.0.1 (or higher).

2) The version of an auxiliary database instance must be equal to the version of the RMAN client.

3) Any release of Oracle database can restore backup sets and copies created by any prior release back to Oracle8i.

4) The RMAN executable version should be the same as the target database. There are some exceptions regarding this rule.

5) The RMAN catalog schema version must be greater than or equal to the RMAN executable.

6) The RMAN catalog is backwards compatible with target databases from earlier releases.

7) While backing up an Oracle Database 10g or later database with the Oracle9i RMAN client, you cannot include a control file that was created using COMPATIBLE=10.0.0 in a datafile backup set. The workaround is to turn control file autobackup ON.

RMAN Compatibility table is shown below.

Target/Auxiliary Database	RMAN Executable	Catalog Database	Catalog Schema
8.0.6	8.0.6	>=8.1.7	>=8.0.6
8.1.7	8.0.6.1	>=8.1.7	>=8.1.7
8.1.7	8.1.7	>=8.1.7	>=RMAN executable
8.1.7.4	8.1.7.4	>=8.1.7	8.1.7.4
8.1.7.4	8.1.7.4	>=8.1.7	>=9.0.1.4
9.0.1	9.0.1	>=8.1.7	>= RMAN executable
9.2.0	>=9.0.1.3 and <= Target database	>=8.1.7	>= RMAN executable
10.1.0	>=9.0.1.3 and <= Target database	>=9.0.1	>= RMAN executable
10.2.0	>=9.0.1.3 and <= target database executable	>=9.0.1	>= RMAN executable
11.1.0	>=9.0.1.3 and <= target database executable	>=9.0.1	>= RMAN executable
11.2.0	>=9.0.1.3 and <= target database executable	>=9.0.1	>= RMAN executable

From above table you can easily conclude about the compatibility about different components of RMAN.

Note that when compatibility matrix is broken the following error message may be generated.
- RMAN-06186: PL/SQL package string.string version string in string database is too old
- RMAN-06429: string database is not compatible with this version of RMAN

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