Oracle .DBF Files. How to Open and Run Select Statements?

Question

We have an Inventory Web Application and an Oracle Database

Oracle Version.. as I see in SQL Plus:

Connected to:
Oracle9i Enterprise Edition Release 9.2.0.1.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP and Oracle Data Mining options
JServer Release 9.2.0.1.0 - Production

( I am very new to Oracle or SQL Plus)

Our Web Application and Database are working fine in the Production System.. and we are able to connect to the database and run sql statements through ODBC (using Microsoft Access)... to view on any table that we want in the Oracle DB..

However we have an investigation to do... about a record's last update time... and in the production table the last update time is now changed to the latest.. And, we need to access the database in the state it was about 24 hours ago.. Fortunately, we do have a full database backup 24 hours earlier... as shown in the below screenshot.. with temp01.dbf highlighted (this is where the actual tables and data are).

The question is this:

How can we mount this database to Oracle or anywhere else (with any other application) to view a particular table e.g. TBL_USERLIST.. and run a select query on this table.. to find the last update time of a particular user based on this backup table.. ( I have this information in the production database... but that is now too late for the investigation purposes... and I need to go back in time to find the previous last update time).

How can we do this easily... without going through many hoops... In an ideal situation.. all i want to do is mount the below files (as a copy).. in some application or existing server... and run "select * from tbl_userlist" without stopping the Production System or have any down time.

Is this possibly easily? How? Thank you.

Answer 1

If you have FLASHBACK enabled in the environment, then you can do a simple query like below

select *
from TBL_USERLIST
as of TIMESTAMP TO_TIMESTAMP('2015-11-12 09:30:00', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MI:SS');