Your expertise is requested for these customer requirements: The Data Guard environment must be in maximum protection mode. Reports must be offloaded…

The requirements are: maximum protection, reporting on a physical standby, no reporting lag, and resilience to a single network failure.
- Maximum Protection: Requires SYNC redo transport to at least one standby. The primary will shut down if it cannot confirm the redo has been written at a synchronized standby.
- Resilience: To survive a single network failure to a standby without shutting down, the primary must have at least two SYNC destinations. If one fails, it can continue operating as long as the other is available.
- Reporting/No Lag: Requires a physical standby with Active Data Guard (Real-Time Query). A SYNC standby ensures data is current, eliminating lag.
Option A fulfills all these conditions by proposing two standbys (providing resilience) with SYNC transport (for max protection), with at least one being a physical standby with Real-Time Query (for reporting with no lag).

B. Asynchronous (ASYNC) transport does not support maximum protection mode; it is used for maximum performance mode.
C. A single physical standby does not provide resilience to a network failure in maximum protection mode; the primary would shut down.
D. A single physical standby, like in option C, creates a single point of failure for the network connection, violating the resilience requirement.
E. SYNC NOAFFIRM is not used for maximum protection mode. Maximum protection requires SYNC AFFIRM to ensure redo is written to standby redo logs before the primary transaction commits.

1. Oracle Data Guard Concepts and Administration 19c, "Maximum Protection", Section 4.2.1. This section states that this mode requires at least one standby database be configured with the SYNC transport mode.

2. Oracle Database High Availability Best Practices 19c, "Data Guard Protection Modes", Section 4.2.3, Page 26. It explains that for Maximum Protection, "To avoid a primary outage due to a network or standby failure, Oracle recommends a minimum of two SYNC standbys".

3. Oracle Data Guard Concepts and Administration 19c, "Using an Active Data Guard Standby for Real-Time Reporting", Section 9.2. This section describes using Real-Time Query, which is only possible on a physical standby.