Originally posted by patel_dil
It depends on the kind of application and environment one works for. I would modify stecal's line to "DBA who thinks export...."
I don't think that kinda clients/corporates exist in this internet era who can wait for couple of hours to bring their database back on line with import and no indexes and creating indexes again might take some time again.

I'm assuming here decent size database if not, Well! One can take cold backup of all the files assoicated with database on Sunday in the middle of the night. May be Public sector is an exception as no one is gonna get fired even if the database crash. OR fix it while users spend their time in cafetaria.