5.1.1 About the Load Data and Unload Data Wizards

Use the Load Data and Unload Data wizards to load and unload data to and from the database.

These step-by-step wizards include the following features:

  • Drag and drop delimited files (CSV, tab-delimited), XLSX files (Excel workbooks), JSON or XML files to load data into a new table.

  • Copy and paste delimited data (CSV, tab-delimited), or select a sample data set to load data into a new table.

  • Data load parser detects almost everything automatically so there is no need to manually pick data types, or provide format masks or decimal characters.

  • Data Loading runs in the background which offers a number of advantages. If a larger file is being uploaded, the dialog can be dismissed. If bad rows cannot be inserted into the target table, the whole load is not lost. All failed rows are saved in error table and can be post-processed manually.

  • With Oracle Database 12c or later, you can choose whether the Primary Key column will be generated using the Identity Column feature or whether a globally unique identifier (SYS_GUID) shall be used. The difference is values and space requirements. Identity Column values are like sequences in that they start with 1 and increase. SYS_GUID values are globally unique, hard to predict, but require more space than the compact Identity Column numbers.
  • The main dialog displays up to 10 columns and 5 rows in the preview. You can configure load settings such as column headers, file encoding, column delimiter / enclosed by (for CSV or TXT), and Select Sheet (for XLSX with multiple worksheets).

  • You can view a full preview and change more settings by clicking the Configure button. The Configure dialog displays a maximum of 100 columns and 100 rows. Users can configure the same setting as settings in the main dialog plus maximum Rows to Sample and columns to load/unload.

  • Settings changes will change the preview both in main and configure dialogs. They also affect data load result.

    Note:

    If file size is greater than (>) or equal (=) to 2097152 bytes and you select to sample All Rows, the following confirmation message displays: Sampling all rows can take a while for larger files. Do you really want to sample the whole file?
  • Select table owner, enter table name and error table name.

    Note:

    By default, all table names are converted to upper case. If data load succeeds without any error, the error table is dropped automatically.
  • The wizards load and unload table data only. They do not load or unload other kinds of schema objects.

  • You can load and unload to and from your own schema only. This is also true for users with administrator privileges.

  • You can load or unload only a single table at a time.

Supported unload formats include:

  • Text such as comma-delimited or tab-delimited data in dialog page.

  • XML documents