On Windows, UNIX, and Linux, the driver supports DataDirect Bulk Load when connected to Oracle databases version 9i R2 and higher. This feature allows your application to send large numbers of rows of data to a database. The driver sends the data to the database in a continuous stream instead of numerous smaller database packets. Similar to batch operations, using bulk load improves performance because far fewer network round trips are required. Bulk load bypasses the data parsing usually done by the database, providing an additional performance gain over batch operations.
DataDirect Bulk Load requires a licensed installation of the drivers. If the drivers are installed with an evaluation license, the bulk load feature is available for prototyping with your applications, but with limited scope. Contact your sales representative or Progress DataDirect SupportLink for further information.
Because a bulk load operation may bypass data integrity checks, your application must ensure that the data it is transferring does not violate integrity constraints in the database. For example, suppose you are bulk loading data into a database table and some of that data duplicates data stored as a primary key, which must be unique. The driver will not throw an exception to alert you to the error; your application must provide its own data integrity checks.
Bulk load operations are accomplished by exporting the results of a query from a database into a comma-separated value (CSV) file, a bulk load data file. The driver then loads the data from bulk load data file into a different database. The file can be used by any DataDirect forODBC driver. In addition, the bulk load data file is supported by other DataDirect product lines that feature bulk loading, for example, a DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET data provider that supports bulk load.
Suppose that you had customer data on an Oracle server and need to export it to a DB2 server. The driver would perform the following steps:
1. Application using Oracle Wire Protocol driver sends query to and receives results from Oracle server.
2. Driver exports results to bulk load data file.
3. Driver retrieves results from bulk load data file.
