Oracle SQL*Loader and PostgreSQL pg_dump and pg_restore

Feature compatibility	AWS SCT / AWS DMS automation level	AWS SCT action code index	Key differences
		N/A	Not all functions are supported by PostgreSQL and may require to create manually

Oracle Usage

SQL*Loader is powerful utility that imports data from external files into database tables. It has strong parsing engine with few limitations on data formats.

You can use SQL*Loader with or without a control file. A control file enables handling more complicated load environments. For simpler loads, use SQL*Loader without a control file (also referred to as SQL*Loader Express).

The outputs of SQL*Loader include the imported database data, a log file, a bad file (rejected records), and a discard file (if enabled).

Examples

Oracle SQL*Loader is well suited for large databases with a limited number of objects. The process of exporting from a source database and loading to a target database is very specific to the schema. The following example creates sample schema objects, exports from a source, and loads into a target database.

Create a source table.

CREATE TABLE customer_0 TABLESPACE users
  AS SELECT rownum id, o.* FROM all_objects o, all_objects x
    where rownum <= 1000000;

On the target Amazon RDS instance, create a destination table for the loaded data.

CREATE TABLE customer_1 TABLESPACE users
  AS select 0 as id, owner, object_name, created
    from all_objects where 1=2;

The data is exported from the source database to a flat file with delimiters. This example uses SQL*Plus. For your data, you will likely need to generate a script that does the export for all the objects in the database.

alter session set nls_date_format = 'YYYY/MM/DD HH24:MI:SS';
set linesize 800
HEADING OFF FEEDBACK OFF array 5000 pagesize 0
spool customer_0.out
SET MARKUP HTML PREFORMAT ON SET COLSEP ',' SELECT id,
  owner, object_name, created FROM customer_0;
spool off

Create a control file describing the data. Depending on the data, you may need to build a script that provides this functionality.

cat << EOF > sqlldr_1.ctl
LOAD DATA
INFILE customer_0.out
into table customer_1
APPEND
fields terminated by "," optionally enclosed by '"'
(id POSITION(01:10) INTEGER EXTERNAL,
owner POSITION(12:41) CHAR,
object_name POSITION(43:72) CHAR,
created POSITION(74:92) date "YYYY/MM/DD HH24:MI:SS")

Import the data using SQL*Loader. Use the appropriate username and password for the target database.

sqlldr cust_dba@targetdb control=sqlldr_1.ctl BINDSIZE=10485760 READSIZE=10485760 ROWSS=1000

For more information, see SQL*Loader in the Oracle documentation.

PostgreSQL Usage

You can use the two following options as a replacement for the Oracle SQL*Loader utility:

• PostgreSQL Import using an export file similar to a control file.

• Load from Amazon S3 File using a table-formatted file on Amazon S3 and loading it into a PostgreSQL database.

pg_restore is a good option when it’s required to use a tool from another server or a client. The LOAD DATA command can be combined with meta-data tables and EVENT objects to schedule loads.

Another option to export and import data from PostgreSQL database is to use COPY TO and COPY FROM commands. Starting with PostgreSQL 12, the COPY FROM command, that you can use to load data into DB, has support for filtering incoming rows with the WHERE condition.

CREATE TABLE tst_copy(v TEXT);

COPY tst_copy FROM '/home/postgres/file.csv' WITH (FORMAT CSV) WHERE v LIKE '%apple%';

For more information, see PostgreSQL pg_dump and pg_restore.