[From Builder AU]
With the introduction of Large Object (LOB) datatypes, the LONG and LONG RAW datatypes were deprecated. If you need to make a copy of a table that uses LONG, the CREATE TABLE AS SELECT syntax won’t work; you’ll get this error: ORA-00997: illegal use of LONG datatype.
The article continues at
http://www.builderau.com.au/program/oracle/soa/Copy-legacy-Oracle-tables-with-SQL-Plus/0,339028441,339291273,00.htm