SQL Loader and password on the command line.

We seem to have bumped into a common issue, and that is that we need to automate the loading of a few thousand files nightly.

EXTERNAL TABLEs seem not to be the answer, as the files are on other servers. Both copying the files to the DB server and using an NFS mount are not allowed by policy.

So, we are to use sqlldr. However, sqlldr expects a username/password. Passing it on the command line is viewable via ps, which leaves the PARFILE option, but that has it written to disk while unencrypted.

Creating a named pipe does not seem to help for the PARFILE:

>mknod a.par p
>echo user/pass>a.par &

[1] 17097
>sqlldr parfile=a.par control=a

Username:

SQL*Loader: Release 9.2.0.4.0 - Production on Mon Oct 29 11:47:53 2007

Copyright (c) 1982, 2002, Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.

SQL*Loader-128: unable to begin a session ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied

[1]+  Done                    echo user/pass >a.par

When prompted for a username i hit CTL-C and ENTER.

There does not seem to be any environment variable for username or password, and putting it in TWO_TASK does not help.

Is there a way to pass a password to SQL Loader without having it exposed on the command line or unencrypted on disk?

B. Received on Mon Oct 29 2007 - 10:54:45 CDT