Automated file loading

I need to set up automatic load of data from files, would appreciate some advice.

Lots of tools in the arsenal:
SQL*Plus
SQL*Loader
PL/SQL
UTL_FILE
DBMS_JOB
cron
ksh

Oracle 8.1.7.4

The files are very small text files. The contents need to be inserted into a single table. They are created on the system by other automated processes. Multiple files appear at irregular intervals with names that are not known in advance. They need to be processed at regular intervals (30 minutes).

Each file must be processed only once, so after processing, it must be renamed or moved. It doesn't look to me as though that could be done with UTL_FILE. Nor can I see a way to search for the files in the directory with UTL_FILE. Both of those tasks could be done with ksh.

It looks to me as though it might be difficult to do this with PL/SQL. Are there other tools that I should be looking at? Received on Fri May 13 2005 - 14:54:34 CDT