What Is It?

Oracle utility which populates Oracle tables from

host files
Tables must be created first
SQL*LOADER operates with control file
Data can be put into control file or stored in
separate data file.
High Performance Data tool.
Data can loaded from any text file and inserted
into the DB

1
SQL Loader Architecture
During processing, SQL*Loader writes messages to
the log file, bad rows to the bad file, and discarded
rows to the discard file.
 

Marina G. Erechtchoukova 2
Data
Positioned file
Each row starts from the most left position.
Each field takes the number of positions according to
its domain constraint
Files with delimiter
Each record is placed into one row
Each field is delimited by a symbol

3
Control file
Specifies the action:
Insert
Replace
Append
Specifies the data file name and list of fields
Has an extension “.ctl”

4
Control File for Positioned Data File
LOAD DATA
INFILE File_name
REPLACE INTO TABLE Table_name
(field_1 POSITION (SP:EP) data_type_1,
…,
field_K POSITION (SP:EP) data_type_K) )

5
Control File for Data File with
Delimiter
LOAD DATA
INFILE File_name
REPLACE INTO TABLE Table_name
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ‘,’ OPTIONALLY
ENCLOSED BY “’”
(field_1, field_2, …, field_K)

6
Control File Contains Data
Control file is prepared in the same way
INFILE *
BEGINDATA clause is added
Below the clause data are placed according to the
format declared in the control information

7
Using the SQL*LOADER
Create table
Prepare Control file and data file or place data into
control file
Invoke the utility without arguments to get a list
of available parameters .
ex: sqlldr username@server/password
control=loader.ctl sqlldr
username/password@server
control=loader.ct

8
The loader.ctl loads an external data file con
delimiter data.
Can also work with tabulation.
Ex: fields terminated by "\t" fields terminated by
X'09

9
How Does One Load MS-Excel Data
Into Oracle
Open the MS-Excel spreadsheet and save it as a CSV
 (Comma Separated Values) file. This file can now be
copied to the Oracle machine and loaded using the
SQL*Loader utility.
There can arise some possible errors since the spread
sheet may contain new line characters ,where as SQL
Loader expects it to be in a single line.
To remove the new line character
(Tools -> Macro -> Visual Basic Editor)

10
Using the SQL*LOADER in ITEC Lab
 Login onto sit.yorku.ca
 Call SQL*LOADER utility
sqlldr login@studb10g Control_File
 System asks for your password
 Enter your password

11
If You Get an Error…
Control file has an extension other than “.ctl”
You did not create the table first
You use different column names in the control file
and in the table you created
SQL*LOADER creates “.log” file
SQL*LOADER creates “.bad” file if an error occurs.

12
Example: Control File
LOAD DATA
INFILE 'site.dat'
REPLACE INTO TABLE Site
FIELDS TERMINATED By ',' OPTIONALLY
ENCLOSED BY "'"
(site_id, location)

13
Example: Data File
1, 'Paris'
2, 'Boston'
3, 'London‘
4, ‘Ottawa’
5, ‘Toronto’

14
Example: Data in the Control File
LOAD DATA
INFILE *
REPLACE INTO TABLE building3
FIELDS TERMINATED BY '|'
( B_NAME, HF, DID, B_SIZE)
BEGINDATA
green|y|d3|20
red|y|d1|18
blue|n|d2|16
15
Methods of downoading data to
a flat file
This can be done using SQL*PLUS or Pl/Sql
Ex below using Sql*PLUS & PL/Sql respectively:
 set echo off newpage 0 space 0 pagesize 0 feed off head
off trimspool on spool oradata.txt select col1 || ',' || col2 ||
',' || col3 from tab1 where col2 = 'XYZ'; spool off.
 declare fp utl_file.file_type; begin fp :=

utl_file.fopen('c:\oradata','tab1.txt','w'); utl_file.putf(fp,
'%s, %sn', 'TextField', 55); utl_file.fclose(fp); end;

16
Data Can be modified as its been loaded.
Column can also be populated with derived and static
values.
Data can also be loaded from multiple files into multiple
table all at once
 Ex :LOAD DATA INFILE file1.dat INFILE file2.dat INFILE file3.dat
APPEND INTO TABLE emp ( empno POSITION(1:4) INTEGER
EXTERNAL, ename POSITION(6:15) CHAR, deptno POSITION(17:18)
CHAR, mgr POSITION(20:23) INTEGER EXTERNAL
)
 Ex: loading into multiple tables

 LOAD DATA INFILE * INTO TABLE tab1 WHEN tab = 'tab1' ( tab

FILLER CHAR(4), col1 INTEGER ) INTO TABLE tab2 WHEN tab =

'tab2' ( tab FILLER POSITION(1:4), col1 INTEGER ) BEGINDATA
tab1|1 tab1|2 tab2|2 tab3|3

17
FILLER columns are used to skip columns/fields in
the load file, ignoring fields that one does not want.
One can create one logical record from multiple
physical records using one of the following two
clauses:
CONCATENATE - use when SQL*Loader should
combine the same number of physical records
together to form one logical record.
CONTINUEIF - use if a condition indicates that
multiple records should be treated as one. Eg. by
having a '#' character in column 1.

18
Methods of Improving the
performance of a sql loader
A very simple but easily overlooked hint is not to
have any indexes and/or constraints (primary key) on
your load tables during the load process. This will
significantly slow down load times even with ROWS=
set to a high value.
Add the following option in the command line:
DIRECT=TRUE. This will effectively bypass most of
the RDBMS processing.

19
Contd…
However, there are cases when you can't use direct
load. For details, refer to the FAQ about the
differences between the conventional and direct path
loader below.
Turn off database logging by specifying the
UNRECOVERABLE option. This option can only be
used with direct data loads.
Run multiple load jobs concurrently.

20
21