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Week 9: Articles

External Tables

Learning Outcomes

  • Learn how to work with external tables.
  • Learn how to define, set ownership, and privileges of external source files.
  • Learn how to define and grant access to Oracle’s virtual directories.

Lesson Materials

This article relies on your understanding general concepts about Oracle’s external tables, which can be found in the following two blog posts:

Oracle external tables are a neat device because they let you define a table inside the database that is dependent on an external physical file. You can import data through that file. This post explains the processes and potential problems with Oracle External Tables.

You have two options when you create Oracle External Tables. They may be defined as SQL*Loader or Oracle Data Pump files. SQL*Loader files are read-only and independent of any proprietary Oracle code and are best represented by Comma Separated Value (CSV), Tabbed Separated Value (TSV), or position specific files. Oracle Data Pump files are read-write and require an Oracle executable to read and write them.

You may also want to review this article. It shows you how to check if the external file is there before you query the data.

Written by michaelmclaughlin

August 13th, 2018 at 11:50 pm

Posted in