Re: Drawbacks for direct path

To add upon a few points

Use a Direct Path Load when You have a large amount of data to load quickly. A direct path load can quickly load and index large amounts of data. It can also load data into either an empty or nonempty table.

SQL*Loader need not execute any SQL INSERT commands; therefore, the processing load on the Oracle database is reduced.

A direct path load calls on Oracle to lock tables and indexes at the start of the load and releases them when the load is finished When data is being loaded in a table using the direct path load option, the table data can only be accessed when the table is not indexed or the indexes are not used by the query.

RESTRICTIONS: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-Cannot load clustered tables.
-There can be no active transactions in the loaded tables.
-There can be no SQL functions used in the control file.
-If the target table is indexed, then no SELECT statements may be issued against the table during the load.

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