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The advantages of archiving generally make it necessary for almost any environment. However, in certain environments it becomes more of a source of overhead than a facility. It's always necessary to evaluate the amount of data loss that is "tolerable" to the end users. Prima facie, absolutely no data loss is tolerable to the end users. However, with some patience and persistence, you may find that some data loss may be acceptable, after all. For instance, if the end users are more interested in data for the last three years, loss of older data may be tolerable, until the time it is needed again. Even when no data loss is tolerable, if the time required repopulating the database is less than the time required to recover it, then archiving becomes redundant.
For example in a data-mart, a cold backup if database is not being operated in archive-log mode, a hot backup is not possible and a logical backup may be taken every night. The data-mart may be loaded via nightly batch processes following the backup. If there is a database crash any time during the day and data file is lost, then database may be restored using the previous night's backup. Then the batch processes that populated it may be rerun to restore it to its pre-crash state. It this restoring and repopulating occurs faster than restoring and applying recovery, then archiving may not be necessary for such an environment and also not recommended because it is useless.
Also another factor that aids the decision is the availability of disk-space for archiving. I have observed that, at some of my client sites, a smaller machine is dedicated for each data-mart. And these smaller machines do not always have access to the necessary disk space for archiving. If space is a major concern due to lack of funds and so on and repopulating the database occurs at the same pace of faster than recovery, then I am generally inclined to tilt toward not having archiving turned on. However, it has to be borne in mind that besides recovery up to the last transaction, you would be missing some other significant advantages by disabling archiving. The point here is, after evaluating availability requirements; you may still be able to configure a satisfactory environment which one that satisfies all SLA clauses without archiving being turned on. Therefore, always keep in mind about business requirement, end-user SLA and disk space for enabling archive log in Oracle database. Therefore, always keep in mind about business requirement, end-user SLA and disk space for enabling archive log in Oracle database.
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