How to Move a Datafile in Oracle Database - Part 1

Dozens of free Oracle tutorials at http://skillbuilders.com/free-oracle-tutorials. See Part 2 (the demonstration) of this tutorial at http://skillbuilders.com/How-to-Move-Datafiles-Oracle-12c.

How do you move a datafile in an Oracle Database? Well, it just got a lot easier in 12c!

Watch this free video tutorial - OCM John Watson of SkillBuilders will demonstrate both techniques, 11g and 12c.

There are many reasons to move a datafile in an Oracle database. Here are just a few:

Renaming datafiles to a standard
Moving from one file system to another
Converting from file system storage to ASM
Changing from SAN to NFS storage
In 11g, we need to take the tablespace offline, meaning downtime. Argh!

In 12c, all that is required is ALTER DATABASE MOVE DATAFILE; this is an online operation with zero downtime. Even "critical" files such as the files associated with the SYSTEM tablespace can be moved online. Consider the ease of migrating to ASM this provides!

This also functions in an Active Data Guard standby environment. And, there are syntax options that allow you to keep or delete the original file. Very cool stuff.