I’ve found a great document at My Oracle Support (Metalink): How to Gather the Header Information and the Content of an Export Dumpfile? [ID 462488.1]. The document explains how to extract DDL statements from dump files and how to use the DBMS_DATAPUMP.GET_DUMPFILE_INFO procedure to gather header information for both original and data pump exports.
In summary,
The Data Definition Language (DDL) statements in a DataPump dump file can be extracted with the parameter SQLFILE:
impdp DIRECTORY=testdir DUMPFILE=test.dmp SQLFILE=ddlcommands.sql FULL=y
Note: This command will not import the data, but it still needs a valid database connection.
The Data Definition Language (DDL) statements in a original export file can be extracted with the parameter SHOW:
imp FILE=test.dmp LOG=test.log FULL=y SHOW=y
The sample PL/SQL script can be found at MOS note. Unfortunately, it can only be used in an Oracle10g Release 2 or any higher release database.
After I’ve made some tests with PL/SQL code, I decided to examine Oracle export files and write my own utility to read the header information.
So I wrote a simple Perl script (dumpinfo.pl). You can get the full source code from GitHub:
Sample outputs:
$ ./dumpinfo.pl testdir/gokhan.dmp
dumpinfo (C) 2011 Gokhan Atil http://www.gokhanatil.com
........Filetype = Datapump dumpfile
......DB Version = 10.02.00.03.0
File Version Str = 1.1
File Version Num = 257
........Job Guid = a73d207ae6b75ceee04400144fad4c76
Master Table Pos = 21
Master Table Len = 144144
......Charset ID = 39
...Creation date = 7-4-2011 13:50:33
........Job Name = "GOKHAN"."SYS_EXPORT_SCHEMA_01"
........Platform = SVR4-be-64bit-8.1.0
........Language = WE8ISO8859P9
.......Blocksize = 4096
$ ./dumpinfo.pl testdir/test.dmp
dumpinfo (C) 2011 Gokhan Atil http://www.gokhanatil.com
........Filetype = Classic Export file
..Export Version = 10.02.01
.....Direct Path = 1 (Direct Path)
...Creation date = Tue Jul 5 10:53:29 2011
Please send me your feedback (and bug reports).
Note: I rewrote the same script in Python!