Right.... anything besides dba / sysdba. It looks like 9i can't do it, but 10g maybe with the following privs to get it out from A (haven't figured out the privs for getting it into B yet): alter tablespace (to make read only), execute_catalog_role (to tun dbms_tts.transport_set_check), exp_full_database (per the docs to include transport_tablespace=y)... Unfortunately, I don't have a 10g DB setup, I'd have to install a new DB just to test this.