Views relevant to Archivelog

There are several system views that can provide us with information reguarding archives, such as:

V$DATABASE

Identifies whether the database is in ARCHIVELOG or NOARCHIVELOG mode and whether MANUAL (archiving mode) has been specified.

V$ARCHIVED_LOG

Displays historical archived log information from the control file. If you use a recovery catalog, the RC_ARCHIVED_LOG view contains similar information.

V$ARCHIVE_DEST

Describes the current instance, all archive destinations, and the current value, mode, and status of these destinations.

V$ARCHIVE_PROCESSES

Displays information about the state of the various archive processes for an instance.

V$BACKUP_REDOLOG

Contains information about any backups of archived logs. If you use a recovery catalog, the RC_BACKUP_REDOLOG contains similar information.

V$LOG

Displays all redo log groups for the database and indicates which need to be archived.

V$LOG_HISTORY

Contains log history information such as which logs have been archived and the SCN range for each archived log.

Using these tables we can verify that we are infact in ARCHIVELOG mode:

SQL> select log_mode from v$database;

LOG_MODE
------------
ARCHIVELOG

SQL> select DEST_NAME,STATUS,DESTINATION from V$ARCHIVE_DEST;

Learn more about managing archive redo logs in the Oracle Database Administrator's Guide:
http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B14117_01/server.101/b10739/archredo.htm