If someone does not care enough to backup a database then I would
assume that it is not in archive log mode. Use this as a learning
experience.
It all depends on what the tablespace the datafiles are part of, if
they belong to a tablespace that has mostly indexes. I would build
scripts to rebuild the indexes and drop indexes (or whatever) in that
tablespace, drop tablespace. Then rebuild that tablespace and
indexes. Then bring any data over from production that was in this
tablespace (sql copy, export/import - whatever you are more
confortable with).
If the tablespace or tablespaces contained large amount of data, I
would probally use transportable tablespaces from production. If it
is a good fit.
Doing a clone from production is easy and depending on the size of
production, could be very fast.
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