Ok,

I think I may have implemented this wrongly. I have a database that needs be on 24/7 so I want to make hot backups. So I am running in Archievelog mode. I wanted to use a recovery catalog. So I created this recovery catalog in the exsisting database and made a hot back up. This seemed to have worked ok. I got no error messages anyway. Next i want to restore the database. The Original is still running so I assume that if I am to restore it I should stop it then retart it in mounted mode. this I do but then when I connect to RMAN I get the following.

C:\>RMAN TARGET="SYS/MANAGER@GTS-COLM" RCVCAT="RMAN/RMAN@GTS-COLM"

Recovery Manager: Release 8.1.7.0.0 - Production

RMAN-06005: connected to target database: PICIS_DB (DBID=1703376184)
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS ===============
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00554: initialization of internal recovery manager package failed
RMAN-04004: error from recovery catalog database: ORA-01033: ORACLE initialization or shutdown in progress

C:\>

To me it looks like it can find the mounted database but because the database is not open it cannot find the recovery manager? Am I close? Then if I open the database it will not perform the restore because it already exsist.

And advise on which course of action I should follow?

Thanks