advanced SQL*Loader

Oracle 7.3.3
HP-UX 10.20

I have several large tables being loaded using SQL*loader. To get more immediate feedback during testing, the when clause is being used to pick out records with the same partial foreign key field (a common id is always the first field in the flat files). The sqlload control parameter "load" was originally used to test just the SQL*Loader portion, but later conversion algorithms need all appropriate tables to be loaded with related data.

I would like to be able to find some way to pass in the when clause as a parameter to sqlload. This way I could set the when clause once at the start of my master load script and all the individual loads would pick out the matching elements. The when clause would be unset when I want to load the entire file. My first attempt was to set up a UNIX environment variable of the form: WHEN_CLAUSE="when (1:3) = '100'" then replace the when clause in the control file with $WHEN_CLAUSE. In retrospect I should have guessed that this wouldn't work because the control file is being read by the sqlload utility, not the UNIX shell.

Can someone suggest a workaround for this problem?

Thanks,
Brian

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