Transporting data is much faster than performing either an export/import or unload/load of the same data. It is faster because, for user-defined tablespaces, the data files containing all of the actual data are copied to the target location, and you use Data Pump to transfer only the metadata of the database objects to the new database.
You can transport data at any of the following levels:
• Database
You can use the full transportable export/import feature to move an entire database to a different database instance.
• Tablespaces
You can use the transportable tablespaces feature to move a set of tablespaces between databases.
• Tables, partitions, and subpartitions
You can use the transportable tables feature to move a set of tables, partitions, and subpartitions between databases.
Transportable tablespaces and transportable tables only transports data that resides in userdefined tablespaces. However, full transportable export/import transports data that resides in both user-defined and administrative tablespaces, such as SYSTEM and SYSAUX. Full transportable export/import transports metadata for objects contained within the user-defined tablespaces and both the metadata and data for user-defined objects contained within the administrative tablespaces. Specifically, with full transportable export/import, the export dump file includes only the metadata for objects contained within the user-defined tablespaces, but it includes both the metadata and the data for user-defined objects contained within the administrative tablespaces.
