Validating a Process Part II
Continued from my
previous post.
While discussing external tables with my
feisty colleague some time back, I explained that I liked using them but I couldn't figure out how to change the file name to match that of what was defined in the table definition.
Colleage to the rescue:
ALTER TABLE table_name LOCATION ( 'new_file_name.csv' );
Cool!
As I mentioned before, I had 4 files types I had to read: 820 and 835, both of the x12 format and two custom file layouts (flat files essentially). Since no one in the group knows Java yet, I wanted to keep the Java portion of the application as small as possible. So with the two custom files, I decided to use external tables. I could then put into practice the above ALTER TABLE statement.
As I looped through the list of files to be processed, I would issue an EXECUTE IMMEDIATE so that I could then SELECT from the table in the next step. It worked like a charm.
As I was doing some testing, I would issue the ROLLBACK statement to clear the tables for the next run. When I verified, there was still data there. WTF?
Oh wait, there's an EXECUTE IMMEDIATE...which runs DDL...which COMMITs...barnacles!
So I couldn't use that new thing I learned, oh well. Fortunately UTL_FILE
does have the ability to rename files so I picked a name like 'external_table_file_name.txt' and rename the incoming file to that, then SELECT. Works like a charm.
Labels: ddl, java, sql, utl_file
