Backing Up and Dropping Partitions

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Originally Posted by paulb

I PM'd you as well, but I'd love to hear this discussed publicly ... I understand what you are saying (been through SOX audits before - joyful). Are you suggesting a text file dump (select * ...)?

I wonder what others think about this. Definitely simple to implement ... so why not this vs. other methods?

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Well I'm biased for obvious reasons, I'll discuss this pubilicly since you asked.

There is just one question you need to answer regarding all of the methods that involve a proprietary format ( exp, expdb, streams, transportable tablespaces, oracle backups):

Can that proprietary format be utilized in 5 years time after your software and hardware have changed? If Not (and the answer is most probably no) then why bother? Its a simple decision to use a CSV file or XML or what ever format you want as long as its an "open" format that is not dependent upon the hardware (big E vs Little E) and underlying software version.

If you want a Product based approach to quickly extract, then IxUnload can do the job for you in quick order.