About Importing, Exporting, Loading, and Unloading Data

You have several options when copying data between Oracle databases or between an Oracle database and external files. Data copying is accomplished by exporting and importing data, and by unloading and loading data. The following table defines these terms.

Term	Definition
Exporting	Copying database data to external files for import into another Oracle database only. The files are in a proprietary binary format.
Importing	Copying data into the database from external files that were created by exporting from another Oracle database.
Unloading	Copying database data to external text files for consumption by another Oracle database or another application (such as a spreadsheet application). The text files are in an industry-standard format such as tab-delimited or comma-delimited (`CSV`).
Loading	Copying data into the database from external text files that are in either a standard delimited format or in any of the formats that are supported by the Oracle SQL*Loader utility.

You can export data from any Oracle Database edition (Express Edition, Standard Edition, and Enterprise Edition) into any other edition.

Topics:

Choosing the Right Import/Export/Load/Unload Option