Thanks Freek, Your query heading changed from implicit to system generated which I appreciate. All comments and additions are welcomed. I'm going to refine my script that generated the output in email sent 11/17@7:25am. My head needs to clear a bit. If anyone wants it when I'm done, let me know. I changed your example below to name the index (via the constraint create). ind$.property still returns YES, (because the index is implicitly created). The index does import in this case -- and changes to NO upon import (because name exists in export file -- note user assumption). So it appears that the ideal scenario is for the index to be created first (named), 'and' then explicitly attach the constraint to the index. (I don't think you can create an index on a table first with a system generated name). This is the only way for the ind$.property to return NO before export/import (that I have discovered so far). In your below example I made one change: (except also on 10.2.0.4) alter table t add constraint named_pk primary key (veld1); Before Export INDEX_NAME GEN UNQ -------------------- ----- ----- NAMED_PK YES YES -- index was created with create constraint stmt. (if not named, this index disappears). T_I_NONUNIQUE NO NO After Import INDEX_NAME GEN UNQ -------------------- ----- ----- NAMED_PK NO YES -- index already had name... so no longer system generated. T_I_NONUNIQUE NO NO Here is a couple results for now just to try and get them down quickly. a. If the index is named via the create constraint statement (implicitly creating an index with the same name), it will not be dropped. It is not necessary to 'explicitly' attach the constraint to the index to prevent this -- however dropping constraints will still drop the index. b. The corollary to 'a.' is, if the constraint is not named, the constraint name is system generated and the index name takes on the same name as the constraint. Then the index can be lost upon import given there is an index laying around it can use. b1. If no other index is laying around that can be used, the index will not be technically 'lost', but recreated with a 'new' system generated name. c. If you 'do' explicitly attach the constraint to the index, then you can drop the constraint and the index will not drop. Statistics will not be lost, and no indexes will be lost. (Caveat here, I did not see a statistics error in import log, but no statistics where imported -- 10g vs. 11g, or parameter difference). d. It appears the statistics are lost because either the new name is different, or there is one less index, -- thus invalidating them. d1. For example: when only the primary key index existed with and the name was system generated. That name changed to a new system generated number (name) -- I'm assuming the statistics where attached to the old name, and thus caused the error, and/or did not import. Joel Patterson Database Administrator 904 727-2546 -----Original Message----- From: D'Hooge Freek [mailto:Freek.DHooge@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2011 8:23 AM To: Patterson, Joel; oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: RE: Naming standards -- that lead to implicit/explicit constraint and index creation. It seems attachments are silently removed when sending to the list, so I resend it with the output inline. [oracle1@elin ~]$ sqlplus fdh SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.2.0 Production on Thu Nov 17 13:53:11 2011 Copyright (c) 1982, 2010, Oracle. All rights reserved. Enter password: Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.2.0 - 64bit Production With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options SQL> drop table t; Table dropped. SQL> create table t (veld1 number(10,0), veld2 number(10,0)); Table created. SQL> alter table t add primary key (veld1); Table altered. SQL> create index t_i_nonunique on t (veld1, veld2); Index created. SQL> insert into t values (1, 2); 1 row created. SQL> insert into t values (2, 3); 1 row created. SQL> commit; Commit complete. SQL> select index_name, index_type, uniqueness from user_indexes where table_name = 'T'; INDEX_NAME INDEX_TYPE UNIQUENES ------------------------------ --------------------------- --------- T_I_NONUNIQUE NORMAL NONUNIQUE SYS_C0014660 NORMAL UNIQUE SQL> select constraint_name, constraint_type, index_name from user_constraints where table_name = 'T'; CONSTRAINT_NAME C INDEX_NAME ------------------------------ - ------------------------------ SYS_C0014660 P SYS_C0014660 SQL> column index_owner format a20 SQL> column index_name format a20 SQL> column is_system_generated format a5 heading GEN SQL> column is_unique format a5 heading UNQ SQL> SQL> select 2 obj_i.owner index_owner, 3 obj_i.object_name index_name, 4 decode(bitand(ind.property,4096),4096, 'YES', 'NO') is_system_generated, 5 decode(bitand(ind.property,1),1, 'YES', 'NO') is_unique 6 from 7 dba_objects obj_t, 8 dba_objects obj_i, 9 sys.ind$ ind 10 where 11 ind.bo# = obj_t.object_id 12 and ind.obj# = obj_i.object_id 13 and obj_t.owner = 'FDH' 14 and obj_t.object_name = 'T' 15 order by 16 index_owner, index_name; INDEX_OWNER INDEX_NAME GEN UNQ -------------------- -------------------- ----- ----- FDH SYS_ed C0014660 YES YES FDH T_I_NONUNIQUE NO NO SQL> exit Disconnected from Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.2.0 - 64bit Production With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options [oracle1@elin ~]$ expdp system schemas=FDH dumpfile=implicit_test.dmp Export: Release 11.2.0.2.0 - Production on Thu Nov 17 13:56:00 2011 Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Password: Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.2.0 - 64bit Production With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options Starting "SYSTEM"."SYS_EXPORT_SCHEMA_01": system/******** schemas=FDH dumpfile=implicit_test.dmp Estimate in progress using BLOCKS method... Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLE/TABLE_DATA Total estimation using BLOCKS method: 64 KB Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/USER Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/SYSTEM_GRANT Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/DEFAULT_ROLE Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLESPACE_QUOTA Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/PRE_SCHEMA/PROCACT_SCHEMA Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLE/TABLE Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLE/INDEX/INDEX Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLE/CONSTRAINT/CONSTRAINT Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLE/INDEX/STATISTICS/INDEX_STATISTICS . . exported "FDH"."T" 5.507 KB 2 rows Master table "SYSTEM"."SYS_EXPORT_SCHEMA_01" successfully loaded/unloaded ****************************************************************************** Dump file set for SYSTEM.SYS_EXPORT_SCHEMA_01 is: /u01/oracle/oracle1/admin/gunnar/dpdump/implicit_test.dmp Job "SYSTEM"."SYS_EXPORT_SCHEMA_01" successfully completed at 13:56:23 [oracle1@elin ~]$ impdp system remap_schema=FDH:FDH99 dumpfile=implicit_test.dmp Import: Release 11.2.0.2.0 - Production on Thu Nov 17 13:57:55 2011 Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Password: Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.2.0 - 64bit Production With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options Master table "SYSTEM"."SYS_IMPORT_FULL_01" successfully loaded/unloaded Starting "SYSTEM"."SYS_IMPORT_FULL_01": system/******** remap_schema=FDH:FDH99 dumpfile=implicit_test.dmp Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/USER Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/SYSTEM_GRANT Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/DEFAULT_ROLE Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLESPACE_QUOTA Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/PRE_SCHEMA/PROCACT_SCHEMA Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLE/TABLE Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLE/TABLE_DATA . . imported "FDH99"."T" 5.507 KB 2 rows Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLE/INDEX/INDEX Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLE/CONSTRAINT/CONSTRAINT Processing object type SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLE/INDEX/STATISTICS/INDEX_STATISTICS ORA-39083: Object type INDEX_STATISTICS failed to create with error: ORA-01403: no data found ORA-01403: no data found Failing sql is: DECLARE I_N VARCHAR2(60); I_O VARCHAR2(60); NV VARCHAR2(1); c DBMS_METADATA.T_VAR_COLL; df varchar2(21) := 'YYYY-MM-DD:HH24:MI:SS'; stmt varchar2(300) := ' INSERT INTO "SYS"."IMPDP_STATS" (type,version,flags,c1,c2,c3,c5,n1,n2,n3,n4,n5,n6,n7,n8,n9,n10,n11,n12,d1,cl1) VALUES (''I'',6,:1,:2,:3,:4,:5,:6,:7,:8,:9,:10,:11,:12,:13,NULL,:14,:15,NULL,:16,:17)';BEGIN DELET Job "SYSTEM"."SYS_IMPORT_FULL_01" completed with 1 error(s) at 13:58:00 [oracle1@elin ~]$ sqlplus fdh99 SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.2.0 Production on Thu Nov 17 13:58:26 2011 Copyright (c) 1982, 2010, Oracle. All rights reserved. Enter password: Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.2.0 - 64bit Production With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options SQL> set linesize 150 set pages 9999 SQL> SQL> SQL> select index_name, index_type, uniqueness from user_indexes where table_name = 'T'; INDEX_NAME INDEX_TYPE UNIQUENES ------------------------------ --------------------------- --------- T_I_NONUNIQUE NORMAL NONUNIQUE SQL> select constraint_name, constraint_type, index_name from user_constraints where table_name = 'T'; CONSTRAINT_NAME C INDEX_NAME ------------------------------ - ------------------------------ SYS_C0014675 P T_I_NONUNIQUE SQL> column index_owner format a20 SQL> column index_name format a20 SQL> column is_system_generated format a5 heading GEN SQL> column is_unique format a5 heading UNQ SQL> SQL> select 2 obj_i.owner index_owner, 3 obj_i.object_name index_name, 4 decode(bitand(ind.property,4096),4096, 'YES', 'NO') is_system_generated, 5 decode(bitand(ind.property,1),1, 'YES', 'NO') is_unique 6 from 7 dba_objects obj_t, 8 dba_objects obj_i, 9 sys.ind$ ind 10 where 11 ind.bo# = obj_t.object_id 12 and ind.obj# = obj_i.object_id 13 and obj_t.owner = 'FDH99' 14 and obj_t.object_name = 'T' 15 order by 16 index_owner, index_name; INDEX_OWNER INDEX_NAME GEN UNQ -------------------- -------------------- ----- ----- FDH99 T_I_NONUNIQUE NO NO SQL> exit Disconnected from Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.2.0 - 64bit Production With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options [oracle1@elin ~]$ Freek D'Hooge Uptime Oracle Database Administrator email: freek.dhooge@xxxxxxxxx tel +32(0)3 451 23 82 http://www.uptime.be disclaimer: www.uptime.be/disclaimer -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l