If you read my post Restoring Standby Database, you know that one of the problems I had was that the new control file refused to open the database with resetlogs even though the database was consistent.
Apparently, there is a restore option that I wasn’t aware of in RMAN. When I restored the control file I simply used:
RMAN> restore controlfile from '<backuppiece>' ;
However, instead of that we can use (note the “primary”):
RMAN> restore primary controlfile from '<backuppiece>' ;
This should restore the control file and convert it to a primary controlfile. Since the problem I mentioned doesn’t happen in primary databases, this should solve the problem.
There is a catch however, 11.2.0.4 has a bug and it doesn’t work (the restored control file is still a standby control file) so you should install a patch (see note 18455956.8). This is fixed in 12.1.