Oracle ARCHIVELOG and NOARCHIVELOG mode

This post explain the difference between the ARCHIVELOG and NOARCHIVELOG modes:

The below query can let you know which mode the oracle database is currently logged in:

select NAME, LOG_MODE from v$database;

1) ARCHIVELOG mode - In ARCHIVELOG mode there is 24 hour possibility of data recovery and             hence it is also known as point-in-time recovery mode.
    In ARCHIVELOG mode all the transactions are backed up that have occurred in the database so that you       can recover it to any point in time.

2) NOARCHIVELOG mode is basically used for development and test instances since there is no transaction     backed up and hence data recovery not possible to any point in time. Since transaction logs are not written in     NOARCHIVELOG mode it has the advantage which increases the performance of the database lightly.