Hi TOMPK..

Real life example are better illustrations...

I have a 5 GB production database (7.3.4). There are several
other "copies" of this for STAGING, TESTING, DEVELOPING, and just plain screwing with it.! Anyways, the developers
_sometimes_ want one of these copies refreshed with production data. I will use EXP/IMP but on the IMP side do not allow IMP to rebuild Indexes because it takes hours.

Instead I extract the index building script from PROD's data dictionary (using fresh extent sizes) AND ALWAYS use UNRECOVERABLE in rebuilding indexes. I cannot quote the time difference due to NOT LOGGING BLOCk changes because I set this up 2 years ago... BUT IT IS SIGNIFICANT!