effect on changing system clock

[a128]

JChiappa,

Thank you for the elaborated example showing me your point. However, if I am not mistaken, you rolled back your clock AFTER the export. My original post said: "For one thing, I know if the tables were created after the date I roll back to, export will complain because the tables should not exist yet.". Maybe I did not make it clear the export was done AFTER the clock is rolled back to prior table creation date.

Here is the sequence of events for my scenerio:

1. 1/2/2004: tables are created
2. 1/3/2004: data inserted into the tables
3. I roll back the clock to 1/1/2004
4. do an export on 1/1/2004, during the export, exp will complain. (pardon me for not posting the exact messages. I will do it once the demo is system is not needed for demo)

As for why I need to do this: the key point here is it's a DEMO system (not a PRODUCTION system) with a fixed set of data, which are entered only once. As an example,

1. Data entered on 1/2/2004
2. In January 2004, when I query 'month-to-date', I get the data above returned.
3. This is a demo system with a fixed set of data entered in Step 1 above. And I don't enter any more data ever.
2. Now it's 3/4/2004. and I try to do a query 'month-to-date', I get nothing back because it's already March 2004.

Thus when I need to do a demo, I need to roll back to January 2004 in order to show the data.

Does this make sense or do I miss something here?