Is there a way to do backups of data, control files and logs without
bringing the engine offline? Starting with what version of Oracle? Is
the backup software free or does it come with standard Oracle or will
we have to purchase a backup software program to do the online
backups?

Yes, have a look at archive logs. If you turn on archive logs on your
database instance you can perform hot backups.

Oracle does not need special backup software. You can use what ever
utilities your operating system provides. In Unix systems we just use
comands such as "cp" and "cpio". However, Oracle does provide the "rman"
utility to facilitate the backing up of the database. I don't know for how
long it has been free with standard Oracle.

David

"C. Geier" <ckgeier (AT) nwc (DOT) edu> wrote