How to use RMANs RESTORE...VALIDATE command

The RESTORE ... VALIDATE and VALIDATE BACKUPSET commands test whether you can restore from your backups:

RESTORE CONTROLFILE VALIDATE;
RESTORE TABLESPACE SYSTEM VALIDATE;
RESTORE ARCHIVELOG ALL VALIDATE;

This example validates the restore of backup sets 56 and 57:

VALIDATE BACKUPSET 56,57;

Same thing, but for individual datafiles:

RESTORE DATAFILE 4,5,6 VALIDATE;

In addition to listing the files needed for restore and recovery, the RESTORE ... VALIDATE HEADER command validates the backup file headers to determine whether the files on disk or in the media management catalog correspond to the metadata in the RMAN repository:

RESTORE DATABASE VALIDATE HEADER;