EXTERNAL TABLE ACCESS (FULL)

Description

Select all rows from an external table

Versions

This operation was introduced in Oracle 9.0.1

This operation is implemented in the following versions

9.0.1
9.2.0
10.1.0
10.2.0

Example

This example was developed using Oracle 9.2.0.1 on Windows 2000

This example requires a directory 

    CREATE DIRECTORY d000 AS "pathname";

The directory does not need to be added to the utl_file_dir parameter

Create a file within the directory e.g. 

    SET FEEDBACK OFF
    SET TRIMSPOOL ON
    SET SERVEROUTPUT ON
    SPOOL t1.csv
    BEGIN
      dbms_output.enable (100000);

      FOR f IN 0..99
      LOOP
        dbms_output.put_line (f||','||LPAD (TO_CHAR (f),10,'0'));
      END LOOP;
    END;
    /

    SPOOL OFF

Create a table definition 

    CREATE TABLE t1 
    (
      c1 NUMBER, 
      c2 VARCHAR2(10)
    )
    ORGANIZATION EXTERNAL
    (
      TYPE ORACLE_LOADER
      DEFAULT DIRECTORY d000
      ACCESS PARAMETERS
      (
        RECORDS DELIMITED BY NEWLINE
        FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
        (
          c1 CHAR,
          c2 CHAR
        )
      )
      LOCATION ('t1.csv');
    );

The statement 

    SELECT * FROM t1;

generates the following execution plan 

0     SELECT STATEMENT Optimizer=CHOOSE
1   0   EXTERNAL TABLE ACCESS (FULL) OF 'T1'