Oracle DBA FAQ - Loading and Exporting Data

A collection of 27 FAQs on Oracle loading data and exporting data. Clear answers are provided with tutorial exercises on saving data as flat files, loading data from flat, exporting and importing database, schema and tables, creating external tables. Topics included in this FAQ are: 1. What Is the Simplest Tool to Run Commands on Oracle Servers? 2. What Is the Quickest Way to Export a Table to a Flat File? 3. How To Export Data with a Field Delimiter? 4. What Is SQL*Loader? 5. What Is a SQL*Loader Control File? 6. How To Load Data with SQL*Loader? 7. What Is an External Table? 8. How To Load Data through External Tables? 9. What Are the Restrictions on External Table Columns? 10. What Is a Directory Object? 11. How To Define an External Table with a Text File? 12. How To Run Queries on External Tables? 13. How To Load Data from External Tables to Regular Tables? 14. What Is the Data Pump Export Utility? 15. What Is the Data Pump Import Utility? 16. How To Invoke the Data Pump Export Utility? 17. How To Invoke the Data Pump Import Utitlity? 18. What Are Data Pump Export and Import Modes? 19. How To Estimate Disk Space Needed for an Export Job? 20. How To Do a Full Database Export? 21. Where Is the Export Dump File Located? 22. How To Export Your Own Schema? 23. How To Export Several Tables Together? 24. What Happens If the Imported Table Already Exists? 25. How To Import One Table Back from a Dump File? 26. What Are the Original Export and Import Utilities? 27. How To Invoke the Original Export Import Utilities?