document updated 9 years ago, on Jul 4, 2014
Sometimes it's useful to be able to grep EVERY column in EVERY table for a string (for instance, to make sure that a certain ID has been completely deleted, or as a way to start exploring an unfamiliar database)
Usually, this boils down to two steps: 1) export all data to a text file, and 2) grep that text file.
However, it's nice to provide a succinct report of schema.table.columns that match, rather than a raw dump of the matching records. This can take some post-processing to do... or a specialized tool.
Oracle
Two ways to export all data:
- expdp
- exp — this is the OLD way to do it -- use expdp instead
The above require extra permissions, however.
There are some ways to search all data, without exporting: