You can use the transportable tablespaces feature to move a subset of an Oracle database and "plug" it in to another Oracle database, essentially moving tablespaces between the databases. The tablespaces being transported can be either dictionary managed or locally managed. Starting with Oracle9i, the transported tablespaces are not required to be of the same block size as the target database's standard block size. Transporting tablespaces is particularly useful for:
Moving data from OLTP systems to data warehouse staging systems Updating data warehouses and data marts from staging systems Loading data marts from central data warehouses Archiving OLTP and data warehouse systems efficiently Data publishing to internal and external customers Performing Tablespace Point-in-Time Recovery (TSPITR)
Moving data using transportable tablespaces can be much faster than performing either an export/import or unload/load of the same data, because transporting a tablespace only requires the copying of datafiles and integrating the tablespace structural information. You can also use transportable tablespaces to move index data, thereby avoiding the index rebuilds you would have to perform when importing or loading table data.
Moving data from OLTP systems to data warehouse staging systems Updating data warehouses and data marts from staging systems Loading data marts from central data warehouses Archiving OLTP and data warehouse systems efficiently Data publishing to internal and external customers Performing Tablespace Point-in-Time Recovery (TSPITR)
Moving data using transportable tablespaces can be much faster than performing either an export/import or unload/load of the same data, because transporting a tablespace only requires the copying of datafiles and integrating the tablespace structural information. You can also use transportable tablespaces to move index data, thereby avoiding the index rebuilds you would have to perform when importing or loading table data.