Data Pump is one of the least known and under-exploited data management tools in Oracle, in part due to the widely used regular export/import utility. Most user's are used to the old tool and as the data pump export dump file is not compatible with the old utilities, there is a point of no return when starting to use the Data Pump utility. However, when the user gets acquainted with the Data Pump features and feels more comfortable using this alternative for regular data management processes, they will notice how productivity and manageability improve.

Data Pump allows more flexible data management scenarios than its predecessor, the regular export/import utilities. Once the power of Data Pump is deployed by the user on the DBA's day-to-day tasks, Data Pump will automatically be positioned as the de-facto data management tool. It is available in all Oracle editions starting from 10g Release 1. Getting to know this tool allows the DBA to plan much more flexible scenarios.

In the next chapter another useful data management tool will be addressed, SQL*Loader, a tool that is used to perform plain file loads to the database.