Restore a selective set of DBF only

Question

we do cold backup of the whole system, meaning
shudown all services, backup all files (O/S, DBF, Control and other DB related files.)
there is a requirement to bring back a single table. It just happens that this table is on its own tablespace where the tablespace span across 2 DBF files.
I can think of restoring all the cold backup files to a separate machine and then extract out the table I want, than import the data back into my orig database for user access.
Is there a way to restore a selective set of DBF files only? I do have a separate server to work with.
thanks in advanced
carlton

Answer 1

Try restoring only required tablespace datafiles, User's default tablespace, redo-log files, temp files, system.dbf, undo tablespace datafiles.
at the mount state the database would error that it could not identify/find the rest of the datafiles, dont worry just offline those files (If that does not work, then try performing offline drop of those files).
Then On primary database generate the trace file of the control file, and manually remove all the entries of other user tablespaces leaving behind the required tablespace and user's default tablespace. Copy this trace file to the box where you will perform the restore of the backup. at the nomount state there create the controlfile from trace sql file. At this point you should be able to open resetlogs this database - grab the table that you need to grab from this DB.
NOTE: a) Do it Only on the copy of your cold backup, dont do this on the good backup itself.
b) This is something that you should be able to do fairly easily, If need be try it on your small test database first.