external tables

[back to Introduction] Getting flat file data into your Oracle data warehouse is likely a daily (or more possibly frequent) task, but it certainly does not have to be a difficult one.  Bulk loading data rates are governed by the following operations and hardware resources: How fast can the data be read How fast can data be written out How much CPU power is available I’m always a bit amazed (and depressed) when I hear people complain that their data loading rates are slow and they proceed to tell me things like: The source files reside on a shared NFS filer (or similar) and it has just a single GbE (1 Gigabit Ethernet) network path to the Oracle database host(s). The source files reside on this internal disk volume which consists of a two disk mirror (or a volume with very few spindles). Maybe it’s not entirely obvious so let me spell it out (as I did in this tweet): One can not load data into a database faster than it can be delivered from the source. Database systems must obey the laws of physics! Or putting it another way: Don’t fall victim to slow data loading because of a slow performing data source. [...]