Re: Oracle heterogeneous data access under UNIX

Jimbo -

Regarding your first question...

Yes, there's a way. New with Oracle9i, one can create a table that accesses a file in the operating system. In Oracle-speak, it's called an "external table." You can use the "organization external" clause on the "create table" command to create a sort of metadata in the database that refers to the actual data that resides outside of the database. There are a number of restrictions on external tables (not surprising, of
course), but it seems pretty neat. I've never seen an external table in action, and I'd be interested in your review of the functionality.

For details, look in chapter 15 of the "Oracle9i Database Administrator's
Guide, Release 1 (9.0.1)", Oracle part number A90117-01, or the Oracle9i Release 2 doc.

For your second question...

This sounds like a job for Mr. Transparent Gateway and his band of super gateways.

Thanks,
Tom

Jim wrote:

> Is there anyway that Oracle under UNIX allows for querying flat text
> file (well delimited, either comma separated or fixed character
> fields) as if they were tables. I don't want to load the data into
> Oracle, but rather query the files as if they were external tables.
>
> Also, can Oracle link multiple non related database servers: i.e.
> MSSQL Server, Ingres, Sybase, MySQL and query all these external
> sources from within Oracle by creating some sort of link between
> Oracle and the external world?
>
> MSSQL 2000 can do this, and now I am trying to achieve the same
> using Oracle under UNIX.
>
> Thank you.
Received on Wed Aug 14 2002 - 01:56:59 CEST