Import Data Pump ORA-39142: incompatible version number

If you get this error when importing data pump (impdp): Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.1.0.7.0 - 64bit Production With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options ORA-39001: invalid argument value ORA-39000: bad dump file specification ORA-39142: incompatible version number 3.1 in dump file "/project/exp/t.dmp

This is caused by the export file has a higher version than the version of the import tool.

You can specify VERSION option when importing data dump.

Per the help page of the expdp, here is the description of VERSION.

VERSION              Version of objects to export where valid keywords are: (COMPATIBLE), LATEST, or any valid database version.

Sample here is to expdp from 11.2 in order to import into 11.1. $ expdp system directory=EXPDIR dumpfile=t.dmp version=11.1.0.0.0

Reference: Move Moving Data Between Different Database Versions - http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14215/dp_overview.htm#CEGFCFFI