Question about temporary tables and imports.

Question

Hello everybody.
Interesting one this. We have an application that uses global temporary tables. We refresh live to test using import of the application schema. I noticed when doing this yesterday that the temporary tables were being recreated in test as perminant rather than temporary.
Is there a reason for this? Has anyone come across this before? Is there a way around it (apart from manual checking)?
Many thanks
Rup

Answer 1

Could you specify how you found out that it is coming in as permanent?
I believe exp/Imp will export and import it is Temporary table. I have just done a simple test to check and it works fine;
Here is my test log:
SQL> connect scott
Enter password:
Connected.
SQL>SQL> CREATE GLOBAL TEMPORARY TABLE test_global
  2          (startdate DATE,
  3           enddate DATE,
  4           class CHAR(20))
  5        ON COMMIT DELETE ROWS;
Table created.
SQL>  select table_name,temporary from user_tables where table_name='TEST_GLOBAL';
TABLE_NAME                     T
TEST_GLOBAL                    Y
SQL> select table_name,temporary from user_tables;
TABLE_NAME                     T
DEPT                           N
EMP                            N
BONUS                          N
SALGRADE                       N
TEST_GLOBAL                    Y
SQL> exit
Disconnected from Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.2.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, Oracle Label Security, OLAP and Data Mining Scoring Engine options
C:\Documents\dbmsdirect\Testing\global>exp
Export: Release 10.2.0.2.0 - Production on Wed Feb 20 12:18:45 2008
Copyright (c) 1982, 2005, Oracle.  All rights reserved.
Username: scott
Password:
Connected to: Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.2.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, Oracle Label Security, OLAP and Data Mining Scoring Engine options
Enter array fetch buffer size: 4096 >
Export file: EXPDAT.DMP > test_global
(2)U(sers), or (3)T(ables): (2)U > t
Export table data (yes/no): yes >
Compress extents (yes/no): yes >
Export done in WE8MSWIN1252 character set and AL16UTF16 NCHAR character set
server uses AL32UTF8 character set (possible charset conversion)
About to export specified tables via Conventional Path ...
Table(T) or Partition(T:P) to be exported: (RETURN to quit) > test_global
. . exporting table                    TEST_GLOBAL
Table(T) or Partition(T:P) to be exported: (RETURN to quit) >
Export terminated successfully without warnings.
C:\Documents\dbmsdirect\Testing\global>sqlplus /nolog
SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.2.0 - Production on Wed Feb 20 12:19:50 2008
Copyright (c) 1982, 2005, Oracle.  All Rights Reserved.
SQL> connect scott
Enter password:
Connected.
SQL> drop table test_global purge;
Table dropped.
SQL> exit
Disconnected from Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.2.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, Oracle Label Security, OLAP and Data Mining Scoring Engine options
C:\Documents\dbmsdirect\Testing\global>imp
Import: Release 10.2.0.2.0 - Production on Wed Feb 20 12:20:19 2008
Copyright (c) 1982, 2005, Oracle.  All rights reserved.
Username: scott
Password:
Connected to: Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.2.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, Oracle Label Security, OLAP and Data Mining Scoring Engine options
Import file: EXPDAT.DMP > test_global.DMP
Enter insert buffer size (minimum is 8192) 30720>
Export file created by EXPORT:V10.02.01 via conventional path
import done in WE8MSWIN1252 character set and AL16UTF16 NCHAR character set
import server uses AL32UTF8 character set (possible charset conversion)
List contents of import file only (yes/no): no >
Ignore create error due to object existence (yes/no): no >
Import grants (yes/no): yes >
Import table data (yes/no): yes >
Import entire export file (yes/no): no > yes
. importing SCOTT's objects into SCOTT
. importing SCOTT's objects into SCOTT
Import terminated successfully without warnings.
C:\Documents\dbmsdirect\Testing\global>sqlplus /nolog
SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.2.0 - Production on Wed Feb 20 12:22:44 2008
Copyright (c) 1982, 2005, Oracle.  All Rights Reserved.
SQL> connect scott
Enter password:
Connected.
SQL>
SQL> select table_name,temporary from user_tables;
TABLE_NAME                     T
DEPT                           N
EMP                            N
BONUS                          N
SALGRADE                       N
TEST_GLOBAL                    Y
SQL> insert into TEST_GLOBAL values (sysdate,sysdate,'test1');
1 row created.
SQL> select * from TEST_GLOBAL;
STARTDATE ENDDATE   CLASS
20-FEB-08 20-FEB-08 test1
SQL> commit;
Commit complete.
SQL> select * from TEST_GLOBAL;
no rows selected
SQL>  select table_name,temporary from user_tables where table_name='TEST_GLOBAL';
TABLE_NAME                     T
TEST_GLOBAL                    Y
SQL>