What methods are available to create a snapshot of an oracle database for testing purposes?

I am new to databases and have just been assigned to work with Oracle. We want to create a snapshot of the database for testing purposes that will allow us to revert back once we're done.

I'm a bit confused as to what my options are.

I've looked into creating a standby. It seems like that may be overkill for what we need and the pages describing how to create one are confusing to one with as little experience as I.

Questions

• Is a standby the best fit or is import/export a viable option?

• Are there other methods?.

Thanks!

If with "export/import" you mean the "traditional" exp and imp commands, than I'd say there is a better solution:

expdp and impdp are much faster and much more flexible when copying a snapshot of a database (or single schema).

If the database is not huge (i.e. Terabytes) then expdp and impdp is the easiest way to achieve this. They are easily scriptable and can be started using SQL also. So no commandline access to the servers is needed (provided the dump files are stored on a shared storage).

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#18080, answer score: 6