Question

Exporting an extremely large table to a flat file?

Asked by: aidan_c

Hi

Platform : Oracle 9.2 / Windows 2000

I'd like to export a table with 40 million rows to a flat file. If I SPOOL data into a regular text file it grinds to a crawl after around 4 million records. I have tried TOAD but it hangs!

Does anybody know of a utility that might do what I am looking for?

Thanks

AC

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Asked On
2004-07-28 at 02:29:27ID21073914
Tags

oracle

,

file

,

flat

,

export

,

table

Topic

Oracle Product Info

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
8

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Answers

 

by: chedgeyPosted on 2004-07-28 at 03:39:29ID: 11654673

AC,

What is wrong with Oracle's export utility?

Try, from a command window:

exp <username>/<password>@<database>

Then enter the requested details such as filename, object owner and objects.

Regards

Chedgey

 

by: aidan_cPosted on 2004-07-28 at 03:49:27ID: 11654731

I need the format to be a flat text file not an Oracle dmp file.

Thanks

 

by: chedgeyPosted on 2004-07-28 at 03:49:51ID: 11654734

AC

For more detailed information on export look at:

http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/server.920/a96652/ch01.htm#1005574

Registration is free.

Regards

Chedgey

 

by: aidan_cPosted on 2004-07-28 at 04:02:44ID: 11654808

I'm quite familiar with EXPORT but I am not familiar with any option that allows you to do the export as a text file. The .dmp file created by Oracle is in binary format!

Thanks
AC

 

by: chedgeyPosted on 2004-07-28 at 04:05:52ID: 11654819

AC,

If you need a flat file output then the easiest way is to write something to do it for in either PL/SQL or Pro*C.

To do it in PL/SQL is quite simple using the supplied UTL_FILE package. As a simplistic example:

Declare
  vFileHandle UTIL_FILE.FILE_TYPE;
  vOutputDirectory VarChar2(50) := 'C:\TEMP\';
  vOutputFileName VarChar2(50) := 'TestPutput.txt';
  Cursor cTable Is Select TABLE_NAME From USER_TABLES;
Begin
  vFileHandle := UTIL_FILE.FOPEN( vOutputDirectory, vOutputFileName, 'w' );
  For rTable In cTable
  Loop
    UTIL_FILE.PUTF( vFileHandle, '%s\n', rTable.TABLE_NAME );
    UTIL_FILE.FFLUSH( vFileHandle );
  End Loop;
  UTIL_FILE.FCLOSE( vFileHandle );
End;

The documentation is at:

http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/appdev.920/a96612/u_file.htm#1002119

I hope that helps.

Regards

Chedgey

 

by: chedgeyPosted on 2004-07-28 at 04:11:39ID: 11654850

Ooooops! I did of course mean UTL_FILE rather than UTIL_FILE.

You will also need to set the UTL_FILE_DIR parameter in the database to allow you access to write to the directory in which you are creating the output file.

Regards

Chedgey

 

by: aidan_cPosted on 2004-07-28 at 04:14:00ID: 11654863

Thanks Chedgey, I will try that.

Regards
AC

 

by: upssPosted on 2005-01-14 at 12:42:30ID: 13048476

You may want trying FastReader from Wisdomforce www.wisdomforce.com  .  FastReader is exporting the data from very large Oracle tables into flat text files very fast . FastReader's huge advantage it doesn't add overhed on your system. Don't know what hardware you have, but in my case FastReader unloaded 55 million rows from huge Oracle table in like 5 minutes.  FastReader also generates loader scripts to various databases such as Oracle (sqlldr), MSSQL Server (bcp), DB2 , MySQL, etc... Which is nice since it is easy to automate the process

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