8i | 9i | 10g | 11g | 12c | 13c | 18c | 19c | 21c | 23c | Misc | PL/SQL | SQL | RAC | WebLogic | Linux
Loading LOB Data Using SQL*Loader
This articles shows how SQL*Loader is used to load CLOB and BLOB data, enabling parallel load operations of large quantities of data. There are several methods for SQL*Loader to load LOBs, but here we will focus on the LOBFILE method, using one LOB per file.
Download the following documents and place them on the server filesystem. In this example we will use the "/tmp" directory for all files.
The first two documents are plain text files, while the second two are Microsoft Word documents. The documents contain the CLOB and BLOB data to be loaded by SQL*Loader. If you prefer you can create your own documents, but make sure the names are reflected in the datafile below.
The lob_test_data.txt file contains regular data and references to the files holding the CLOB and BLOB data.
1,one,01-JAN-2006,clob_test1.txt,blob_test1.doc 2,two,02-JAN-2006,clob_test2.txt,blob_test2.doc
Now we have all the data, we need a table to load the data into.
DROP TABLE lob_tab; CREATE TABLE lob_tab ( number_content NUMBER(10), varchar2_content VARCHAR2(100), date_content DATE, clob_content CLOB, blob_content BLOB );
Define the SQL*Loader controlfile, called lob_test.ctl, that will allow us to load the data.
LOAD DATA INFILE 'lob_test_data.txt' INTO TABLE lob_tab FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' (number_content CHAR(10), varchar2_content CHAR(100), date_content DATE "DD-MON-YYYY" ":date_content", clob_filename FILLER CHAR(100), clob_content LOBFILE(clob_filename) TERMINATED BY EOF, blob_filename FILLER CHAR(100), blob_content LOBFILE(blob_filename) TERMINATED BY EOF)
Notice the filename columns in the datafile are marked as FILLER
s, so they are not loaded into the table, but they are used in the LOBFILE
definition to identify the loacation of the LOB information.
The data is then loaded using the following SQL*Loader command, run from the command line in the same directory as files.
sqlldr userid=test/test@db10g control=lob_test.ctl log=lob_test.log bad=lob_test.bad
The following query shows both the regular data and the LOB data have been loaded successfully.
COLUMN varchar2_content FORMAT A16 COLUMN date_content FORMAT A12 COLUMN clob_content FORMAT A20 SELECT number_content, varchar2_content, TO_CHAR(date_content, 'DD-MON-YYYY') AS date_content, clob_content, DBMS_LOB.getlength(blob_content) AS blob_length FROM lob_tab; NUMBER_CONTENT VARCHAR2_CONTENT DATE_CONTENT CLOB_CONTENT BLOB_LENGTH -------------- ---------------- ------------ -------------------- ----------- 1 one 01-JAN-2006 This is a clob test1 24064 2 two 02-JAN-2006 This is a clob test2 24064 2 rows selected. SQL>
For more information see:
- External Tables Containing LOB Data
- Loading LOBs
- SQL*Loader Enhancements in Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (12.1)
Hope this helps. Regards Tim...