OCA: Oracle 10g™ Administration I: Study Guide

7.4. Creating Directory Objects

Directory objects are named directory locations on the database server. Directories are used with several database features, including BFILEs, external tables, utl_file, and Data Pump. Of these, only Data Pump is germane to the certification exam.

Under Unix, you create directories with the CREATE DIRECTORY statement, like this:

CREATE DIRECTORY dump_dir AS '/oracle/data_pump/dumps';
CREATE DIRECTORY log_dir AS '/oracle/data_pump/logs';

Under Windows, you create directories like this:

CREATE DIRECTORY dpump_dir AS 'G:\datadumps';

Directories are not schema objects, like tables or synonyms, as they are not owned by a schema. Instead, directories are like profiles or roles in that they are owned by the database. ...