Re: HELP w/ PL/SQL writing to a flat file.

CyberSaurn (cybersaurn_at_aol.com) wrote:
: gained will help support other areas in the group. PERL5 would need
: to be bought, installed, developers trained, etc. etc. Would delay the

PERL5 is free - www.perl.com for more info; www.hermetica.com for more info on the DBI/DBD-Oracle interfaces to Oracle. Your points of installation and training are valid.

: On the flip side it is A LOT of data -- millions of rows to be processed --
: very long record lengths to be output too (and 500,000 records?) But there is
: minimal formatting. Run a query, output tab-delimited columns to flat file,
: run a query, append additional records, run a query.... And we will run batch
: overnight.

As long as the formatting is just tab-delimited and portability is an issue then PL/SQL should be man enough for the job.

Another thought is that by accessing the data external to the database you can ensure that you get the database to do the minimum amount of work :-

 Read the data in an un-sorted manner, sorting the data in memory and thus  freeing the RDBMS from this burden;

 Able to cache/store/traverse/manipulate the data in process memory rather  than re-reading it a number of times and/or caching it in PL/SQL records  /tables in the RDBMS. This can be useful, for example when producing a number  of different reports based on the same set of data.

: But hey! Isn't that what a prototype is all about? <g>

Have fun

IAP

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