Some import/export notes

• Always use direct=y when using exp/imp (much faster since it basically copies blocks from the db to the dumpfile)
• Disable archive log mode before an import of a large database and do a backup afterwards. It's not really state of the art to delete archive logs when you get an ORA-19809: limit exceeded for recovery files (altough you could just back them up <.<)
  
• When moving data from a <=9i to 10g+ database, only do a schema import. Those old standard users could cause the import to just abort.

Just a few things I remember from some frustrating few hours of exp/importing a 40 gig database -.-

Btw: Just in case you don't know how to disable archive log mode:

shutdown immediate;
startup mount;
alter database noarchivelog;
alter database open;
archive log list;

MIGRATION: Test import of Database

Test import of intranet Database for migration with new Character set on Unix (Source Windows).

FROMCHAR WE8MSWIN1252
TOCHAR WE8ISO8859P15

CSSCAN lists many lossy characters. Decided with developers to just try what happens.

Errors:
ORA-19815, ORA-16038, ORA-19809:
db_recovery_file_dest_size (online changeable) was set to 4GB, which let the import get stuck when the archive logfiles filled that space up. Extended to 8 GB.
Note to self: Disable archivelog mode if creating a new DB with import.