Can I use impdp FULL=Y for an Oracle database charset conversion? I need create a copy of an Oracle 12.2 instance (Oracle Restart) running on an Linux VM. The new instance needs a charset conversion from WE8ISO8859P1 to UTF8

I started by creating a clone of the VM that is now up and running.

I was thinking about following these steps:


expdp FULL=YES from the cloned machine to a safe storage location
destroy the database from the clone using DBCA
create a new database on the clone using DBCA setting UTF-8 as charset
impdp FULL=YES from the previous exported datapump


I have some doubts about the impdp FULL=YES... will this work or will it overwite some configuration on SYS or other Oracle maintained schemas with some values that still refers to WE8ISO8859P1 charset?

Will this work or should I exclude all the Oracle maintained schemas from the impdp?
On export the documentation states:

A full export does not, by default, export system schemas that contain Oracle-managed data 
and metadata. Examples of system schemas that are not exported by default include 
SYS, ORDSYS, and MDSYS. 


If you want to be absolutely sure I would switch to a schema-mode import instead. You can still use the full export. That way you specify what schemas you want to import.

Regards,
Daniel