A question of copyright - Can you legally create Oracle EXPORT files from your own utility?

I keep seeing requests on how to extract and re-load data into Oracle. Back in 1992, I wrote an UNLOAD utility [ who hasn't? ] to unload queries to re-load using SQL*Loader. It supported various formats [fixed, CSV etc]. I found LONGs to be a problem. SQL*Loader couldn't handle the new lines [even quoted]. I could not find a work around with loader. Then I thought about using good old Oracle IMP(ort). The format of the Oracle export file was pretty straight forward [well at least for TABLE mode exports using Oracle 7.2 (way back in 1995 or thereabouts)] so I switched to generating EXPORT/IMPORT compatible files. Real handy for schema upgrades and making test databases as subset of production [enough hype].

I was wanting to release this UNLOAD utility as a freebie [yes I admit, as a little teaser to suck, I mean get people interested in a tool that I'm developing]. The question is, IS IT LEGAL TO CREATE ORACLE COMPATIBLE EXPORT FILES? Does anyone know?

Is this another case of UNISYS and the GIF [LZW] controversy? Can anyone offer any [useful] suggestions? Received on Thu May 09 2002 - 07:45:10 CDT