ORA-01207: file is more recent than control file - old control file - How you will approach this error ?

You are facing following error while starting up your database. ORA-01207: file is more recent than control file - old control file.
What you can do in this case ?
If you google this error, you may come across many article recommending recovery from backup controlfile and opening database with resetlogs.
Do we really want to open our database in resetlogs mode by using a backup controlfile- Is there any alternative to recover without resetlogs ? Yes there is one method to do that provided that you have a trace copy of your controlfile. 

In order to maintain data consistency, the SCN must be the same across all datafiles, the controlfile & current REDO file.

By definition when you use "backup controlfile" it has an out of date SCN in it.RESETLOG forces the SCN back to 1 in order to obtain consistency across all the files in the database.CREATE CONTROLFILE populates this new file with the most recent SCN that exists in the datafiles. So it’s a good idea to opt second option if you have a trace file copy of your controlfile.

Lets demonstrate this with an example-

[oracle@mydb01]:[TTREC1] $ sqlplus / as sysdba

SQL*Plus: Release 12.1.0.2.0 Production on Thu Sep 15 19:51:36 2016

Copyright (c) 1982, 2014, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to:

Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.2.0 - 64bit Production With the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, OLAP, Advanced Analytics and Real Application Testing options

Create a trace file copy of your controlfile.

SQL> alter database backup controlfile to trace as '/tmp/ttrecctl.sql';

Database altered.

Lets do some activit,to make sure none of the database operation are affected by this activity. 

SQL> create table test1 as select * from dba_tables;

Table created.

SQL> @switch

SQL> alter system switch logfile;

System altered.

SQL>

SQL> select name from v$controlfile;

NAME

--------------------

/data1/control1.ctl

/data2/control2.ctl

SQL> exit

Disconnected from Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.2.0 - 64bit Production

With the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, OLAP, Advanced Analytics  and Real Application Testing options

Lets remove your controlfile-

[oracle@mydb01]:[TTREC1] $ rm -f /data1/control1.ctl /data2/control2.ctl

[oracle@mydb01]:[TTREC1] $ sqlplus / as sysdba

SQL*Plus: Release 12.1.0.2.0 Production on Thu Sep 15 19:53:16 2016

Copyright (c) 1982, 2014, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to:

Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.2.0 - 64bit Production With the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, OLAP, Advanced Analytics and Real Application Testing options

SQL> create table test2 as select * from dba_tables;

Table created.

SQL>

Database is still working as normal even when we don’t have a controlfile.

SQL> @switch

SQL> alter system switch logfile;

System altered.

SQL>

SQL> /

System altered.

SQL>

I will crash my database-

SQL> shut abort ;

ORACLE instance shut down.

SQL>

SQL> startup;

ORACLE instance started.

Total System Global Area 2147483648 bytes

Fixed Size                  3712904 bytes

Variable Size            1996490872 bytes

Database Buffers          134217728 bytes

Redo Buffers               13062144 bytes

ORA-00205: error in identifying control file, check alert log for more info

SQL> exit

Disconnected from Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.2.0 - 64bit Production

With the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, OLAP, Advanced Analytics and Real Application Testing options

Edit the controlfile trace that we made prior to this exercise.After edit the file should look like-

[oracle@mydb01]:[TTREC1] $ cat /tmp/ttrecctl.sql

CREATE CONTROLFILE REUSE DATABASE "TTREC" NORESETLOGS FORCE LOGGING ARCHIVELOG

    MAXLOGFILES 16

    MAXLOGMEMBERS 3

    MAXDATAFILES 100

    MAXINSTANCES 8

    MAXLOGHISTORY 292

LOGFILE

  GROUP 1 (

    '/data1/TTREC/onlinelog/o1_mf_1_cwzoob3m_.log',

    '/data2/TTREC/onlinelog/o1_mf_1_cwzoobdr_.log'

  ) SIZE 100M BLOCKSIZE 512,

  GROUP 2 (

    '/data1/TTREC/onlinelog/o1_mf_2_cwzoobs8_.log',

    '/data2/TTREC/onlinelog/o1_mf_2_cwzooc2y_.log'

  ) SIZE 100M BLOCKSIZE 512,

  GROUP 3 (

    '/data1/TTREC/onlinelog/o1_mf_3_cwzoock3_.log',

    '/data2/TTREC/onlinelog/o1_mf_3_cwzoocvl_.log'

  ) SIZE 100M BLOCKSIZE 512

DATAFILE

  '/data1/TTREC/datafile/o1_mf_system_cvf5lom7_.dbf',

  '/data1/TTREC/datafile/o1_mf_sysaux_cvf5jnh9_.dbf',

  '/data1/TTREC/datafile/o1_mf_undotbs1_cvf5npon_.dbf',

  '/data1/TTREC/datafile/o1_mf_users_cvf5oss4_.dbf',

  '/data1/TTREC/datafile/o1_mf_orinon_t_cvf5lomr_.dbf',

  '/data1/TTREC/datafile/o1_mf_oraion_t_cvf5jnjb_.dbf',

  '/data1/TTREC/datafile/o1_mf_tbs_test_cvf5ostw_.dbf',

  '/data1/TTREC/datafile/o1_mf_orion_da_cvf5npp4_.dbf',

  '/data1/TTREC/datafile/o1_mf_testa_cxf1h6kw_.dbf',

  '/data1/TTREC/datafile/o1_mf_testb_cxnhzbbf_.dbf'

CHARACTER SET AL32UTF8

;

[oracle@mydb01]:[TTREC1] $ sqlplus / as sysdba

SQL*Plus: Release 12.1.0.2.0 Production on Thu Sep 15 19:56:58 2016

Copyright (c) 1982, 2014, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to:

Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.2.0 - 64bit Production With the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, OLAP, Advanced Analytics and Real Application Testing options

SQL> @/tmp/ttrecctl.sql

Control file created.

SQL> select name ,open_mode from v$database;

NAME      OPEN_MODE

--------- --------------------

TTREC     MOUNTED

SQL> recover database ;

Media recovery complete.

SQL> alter database open;

Database altered.

SQL> select count(1) from test1;

  COUNT(1)

----------

      2508

SQL> select count(1) from test2;

  COUNT(1)

----------

      2509

SQL> exit

Disconnected from Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.2.0 - 64bit Production

With the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, OLAP, Advanced Analytics and Real Application Testing options.

Simply we opened our database without using open resetlogs.