You could explore Sudoers on expdp.. and create particular user that wish to do the export. I know we had this requirement before where specific OS users were requesting expdp privileges and the in-house DBA is hesitant (security concerns). I've forgotten the full details about it, but here's the sample sudoers file ------------------------------------------------- # sudoers file. # # This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root. # # See the sudoers man page for the details on how to write a sudoers file. # # Host alias specification # User alias specification # Cmnd alias specification Cmnd_Alias EXPORT = /oracle/product/10.2/bin/exp, /oracle/product/10.2/bin/expdp Cmnd_Alias NO_ORA_BIN = !/oracle/product/10.2/bin/* # Defaults specification # User privilege specification root ALL=(ALL) ALL # Uncomment to allow people in group wheel to run all commands # %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL # Same thing without a password # %wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL # Samples # %users ALL=/sbin/mount /cdrom,/sbin/umount /cdrom # %users localhost=/sbin/shutdown -h now %ora_exp_users oel11g=NO_ORA_BIN, EXPORT ------------------------------------------------- Just sharing it to you to explore, but.. I advise you do it first on your test VMs/environment. -- Karl Arao karlarao.wordpress.com karlarao.tiddlyspot.com