SQL*Loader vs Import performance

We are trying to improve performance of DW ETL by replacing some import processes by SQL*Loader. Interestingly we are finding that direct path SQL*Loader takes almost twice as long to run than import. We can achieve some scalability by running SQL*Loader in parallel, but the whole process still takes more or less as long as the import.

Test table load file is about 2.5GB comma delimited, approx 6 million records. This is required because the table contains mostly VARCHAR columns (131 columns). If the table is extracted using fixed size the extract file is about 12GB, which presents network transfer problems, etc. During the SQL*Loader session the CPU utilization is quite high compared to i/o load, which makes me wonder how CPU intensive is parsing of each comma delimited record.

My past experiences with SQL*Loader have always been that it is the fastest method of loading data into an Oracle database although I've mostly used fixed size load records.

Any insights into this situation?
We are running 8.1.6.1 on NT 4.0.

Thanks,
Petr Schmidt Received on Sun Jan 28 2001 - 17:35:44 CST