Do you have a call to dbms_datapump.start_job? Otherwise there must be a problem in the procedure. Dick Goulet Senior Oracle DBA ________________________________ From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Joe Smith Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 2:40 PM To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Datapump defining My Windows dbms_datapump job is always on DEFINING state? I can run the cmd line interface expdb and it works and writes the dmp file to Data_Pump_Dir. My procedure compiles and executes but the state is always DEFINING in dba_datapump_jobs. Has anybody experienced this?