Oracle Spatial dump Transformation

Question

I have received an Oracle Spatial dump (.dmp) from an external source, but lack access to an Oracle Spatial DB. Is there an open-source way to extract the data? ogr2ogr seems to work with a running db only.

Answer 1

The only way to read an Oracle dump file is a fully functional Oracle installation.

Note that there are two different types of dump files:

• The "old" format, produced by the exp tool. This needs to be imported using the imp tool.
• The normal format, produced by the expdp (aka "Data Pump") tool. This is imported using the impdp tool.

Nothing distinguishes one from the other externally, but you can find out by looking at the strings at the start of the file:

Here is how an "old-style" dmp file looks like:

$ strings base_data.dmp | head
gEXPORT:V19.00.00
USCOTT
RTABLES
1024
                                       Tue Jun 8 10:20:38 2021base_data.dmp
#G#G
#G#G
+00:00
BYTE
UNUSED

Here is how a normal "expdp" dump file looks like:

$ strings spatial.dmp | head
"SYSTEM"."SYS_EXPORT_SCHEMA_01"
x86_64/Linux 2.4.xx
ORCLCDB
AL32UTF8
19.00.00.00.00
001:001:000001:000001
HDR>T<?
E)U4=OP
LM11110&A

Each import command (imp or impdp) also has options for showing the content of the file in terms of schemas, tables, indexes etc it contains.

Use imp help=y or impdp help=y to find out about the command syntax and options.