Oracle Data Pump expdp to local computer that does not have oracle installed

Question

Hi I've been reading this instruction: http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/10g/oracle-data-pump-10g.php#NetworkExportsImports

From my understanding, I need to login my local oracle database, establish a database link to the remote oracle server, then use expdp to export database to local.

But now I only have sqlplus installed in local computer, how can I expdp to local?

Thank you very much.

Answer 1

You can't. expdp only works locally. The database link is just a kludge to make the Oracle instance on your current machine be able to see the data in the other database. If you truly need a remote back up, your only non-custom or third party option would be exp, but that's deprecated. (I'm not aware of any third party solutions, either.)

Another option to consider is running the command on the remote server and then using something else to copy the file. This is more feasible if you run a Linux server, since you can likely use SSH and SFTP.

You could try Oracle Express on your local machine if you want to pursue the database link option. That is a very heavy solution, of course.

(In all honesty, I have had endless troubles with expdp anyway. Well, more with impdp, but still. The data dump/restore situation in Oracle is not very good, in my opinion.)