Hi Guys,

I have just noticed that few of the DBAs and most of the developers doesn’t know that starting from Oracle Instant client version 12.2.0.1, you can now use few of the useful utilities like EXPORT, IMPORT, DATAPUMP, SQL Loader, workload replay clients for Oracle RAT etc. You only need to download the Instant Client for Linux x86_64 (instantclient-tools) that has an additional package called ‘Tools’.
This was earlier not possible on systems where you do not have the proper/complete Oracle database installation i.e. Oracle clients installations (It was there with full client installations but not with Instant clients). This is very useful for your developers who want to take table level database backups using traditional utilities like export/import or new data pump.

It’s quite easy to install too, you just need to unzip the software and set few of the environmental variables and you are all set.
Let’s assume you have downloaded the package and unzipped, let’s set the environmental variables next.

#export PATH
export ORACLE_HOME=/home/oracle/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/client_1/
export TNS_ADMIN=$ORACLE_HOME/network/admin
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:
export PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH
 

Okay, we are all set, let’s try to call the classic export (EXP) utility and see how it goes.

[oracle@orainst2-test-monkey01 ~]$ exp

Export: Release 12.2.0.1.0 - Production on Wed Nov 25 12:44:24 2020

Copyright (c) 1982, 2017, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

Username:
 

Great, it worked. Now, let’s try to take a backup.

[oracle@orainst2-test-monkey01 ~]$ exp TESTUSER/XXXXXXXX@(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=XXXXXXX)(PORT=XXX))(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=orainstST))) 
TABLES=TEST_TABLE1, TEST_TABLE2 FILE=/u01/app/testdb/dbc/backups/testdb_pdtest.dmp

Export: Release 12.2.0.1.0 - Production on Wed Nov 25 12:44:51 2020

Copyright (c) 1982, 2017, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

Connected to: Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options
......
Estimate in progress using BLOCKS method...
Processing object type DATABASE_EXPORT/SCHEMA/TABLE/TABLE_DATA
Total estimation using BLOCKS method: 250.8 MB
Processing object type DATABASE_EXPORT/SCHEMA/TABLE/TABLE
Processing object type DATABASE_EXPORT/SCHEMA/TABLE/TABLE_DATA
. . exported "TESTUSER"."TEST_TABLE1"                              190.9 MB       4819123 rows
.........
...
 

Hope It Helped!
Prashant Dixit