I have setup a simple physical standby database using Oracle 9.2.0.5. My primary database spits out archived redo logs at the rate of about 128M/minute. Because I don't want to affect the performance of the primary db, I am not using lgwr to write to both destinations.

The logs get generated on the primary. They get transferred to the standby fine. However, the standby takes a while to apply them during the managed recovery process. For example, my primary db has generated logs 100-150 and they are sitting on disk on my primary box. Also, logs 100-150 are sitting on my standby box as they have been transferred correctly. However, my managed recovery on the standby is only on "Media Recovery Log ...1_135.log.

How do I monitor the lag between what's been transferred and what's been applied? I looked at v$archived_log where dest_id = 1 and dest_id=2, but they were in sync because the logs had already been shipped to the standby successfully. There was nothing in v$archive_gap as the primary doesn't think anything else needs to be transferred. I am not using the Data Guard tools at the moment. Any hints?