Hi tom,
I got lot of info with this help.

Thanks a lot! It met 100% my needs!

Great article. Detailed step by step instructions for exactly what I wanted. Thanks.

Trying to apply this routine on a Oracle Linux 6.2 and Oracle XE 11g R2 and don't realy understand how to do it. For example there are no initXE.ora only a init.ora with no spfile line etc.

Is there a routine to get it to work on a Oracle XE 11g R2?

Tom, with your permission I would like to answer Uno's question.

Yes the steps works on Linux as well (oradim is not available on Linux). These are the steps (using RedHat 5.8 - 64bit and 11gXE) I followed to change the default SID value "XE" to new SID value "RAXE".

1. login to the oracle account on 11gXE machine. Search and copy the oracle_env.sh file to the /u01/app/oracle directory

2. source the oracle_env.sh file, invoke sqlplus to login as sysdba, generate a pfile from spfile (for backup)

3. cleanly shut down the database, also use /etc/init.d/oracle-xe stop to stop the listener and other related services

4. copy the /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/dbs/spfileXE.ora to /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/dbs/spfileRAXE.ora

5. create a new /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/dbs/initRAXE.ora file with a single line in it:
SPFILE='/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/dbs/spfileRAXE.ora'

6. change the environment variable ORACLE_SID to RAXE (export ORACLE_SID=RAXE) and start the sqlplus as sysdba:
(sqlplus / as sysdba) and execute the following:

SQL> startup nomount pfile=/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/dbs/initRAXE.ora;

SQL> select instance_name from v$thread;
(you should see RAXE returned)

SQL> create pfile from spfile;

7. open another xterm as oracle user, source the oracle_env.sh , setenv ORACLE_SID=RAXE and start the listener

8. in the previous xterm screen at SQL prompt type:
SQL> alter system register;

9. shutdown cleanly and execute /etc/init.d/oracle-xe stop

10. at the /u01/app/oracle as oracle user, search and replace the ORACLE_SID=XE with ORACLE_SID=RAXE:

find . -type f -not -iwholename '*.lck' | xargs sed -i 's/ORACLE_SID=XE/ORACLE_SID=RAXE/g'

11. edit the /etc/init.d/oracle-xe script as root and replace 3 out of 4 occurrences of XE with RAXE (line# 39,308,310)

12. edit the /etc/oratab as root from:
XE:/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe:N to
RAXE:/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe:N

13. reboot the machine

14. after the reboot completed, you can verify by executing /etc/init.d/oracle-xe status

Hope this proves helpful
r/ Zafer

I followed all the steps but when i connect SQL, it connected to idle instance. So I tried to up the database and it throwed below error.
SQL> startup
ORA-01078: failure in processing system parameters
ORA-01565: error in identifying file 'C:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\10.2.0\serv
er\dbs/spfileXE.ora'
ORA-27041: unable to open file
OSD-04002: unable to open file
O/S-Error: (OS 2) The system cannot find the file specified.

So, is there any other configuration that needs to be done?

Yes, XE Spfile was the issue.
Thanks for the help.

followed the step by step process in detail!
it was a success! THANKS A MILLION@

Hi Tom,
After following the steps ,if i'm trying to import a dump using impdp i'm getting following error.

IMPDP admin/admin@new_sid SCHEMAS=abc DIRECTORY = DB_BKP_DIR DUMPFILE=abcd.DMP LOGFILE=IMP_abcd.LOG REMAP_SCHEMA=abc:abc


UDI-12154: operation generated ORACLE error 12154
ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve the connect identifier specified
Do i need to change tnsnames.ora,listener.ora?If Yes how?

SIDX =
  (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = localhost)(PORT = 1521))
    (CONNECT_DATA =
      (SERVER = DEDICATED)
      (SERVICE_NAME = sidx)
    )
  )