yes, all are the same between source and target. and yes, the tbs was in read-only mode. the only thing I can think of is that the char sets are supposed to be the same, yet our source export seems to have been done in US7ASCII whereas the target database import is using WE char set. the nat char sets are the same, though. also, I know that TTS has worked for these 2 DBs before. my source DB is no longer available (it was an EMC BCV mirror that's now been reestablished). looks like I'll haveta go with a regular export/import on this.