Oracle Database Administration: The Essential Refe

Direct path versus conventional path

The conventional path export method, which is the Export default, uses the standard SQL buffer to fetch rows. It simply issues a SELECT * FROM TABLE to retrieve all the rows. The direct path export method, on the other hand, bypasses the normal processing and retrieves the data blocks directly into its own buffer. In most cases, the direct path export is noticeably faster than the conventional path export. Other than a notation in the export file, there are no differences in the file generated by these two methods.

Note

Since the direct path export bypasses the SQL buffer, character set translation is not performed. The user process performing the export must have the same character set specified as the database. This limitation does not apply to the import.

In Oracle8 Release 8.0, tables with large objects (LOBs) cannot be processed using the direct path export method.