Forum OpenACS Q&A: Oracle export - full database vs. per user

With Oracle, I want to do a full database export, except for one user/schema. Unfortunately, there seems to be no easy way to tell Oracle to do that. So, it looks like what I need to do is get a list of all the users I want to export, and do a separate export for each one. So far so good.

But, will I miss any data by doing it that way, rather than using a full database export? In particular, I'm wondering about the stuff I see at the top of my full database export file - see below. This stuff will perhaps come along with the SYSTEM user?

About to export the entire database ... 
. exporting tablespace definitions 
. exporting profiles 
. exporting user definitions 
. exporting roles 
. exporting resource costs 
. exporting rollback segment definitions 
. exporting database links 
. exporting sequence numbers 
. exporting directory aliases 
. exporting context namespaces 
. exporting foreign function library names 
. exporting object type definitions 
. exporting system procedural objects and actions 
. exporting pre-schema procedural objects and actions 
. exporting cluster definitions 
. about to export SYSTEM's tables via Direct Path ... 
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Posted by Sebastiano Pilla on
In a certain sense, yes, by doing a user export you will miss the data you're outlining. This is the data dictionary, in other words the logical structure of your database: the informations about tablespaces, users, and so on.

AFAIK, the data dictionary is owned by SYS, not by SYSTEM, so you don't gain anything by exporting the SYSTEM user. And do not even think for a minute about exporting SYS from one database and importing it into another!