SQL*Loader or external table for load a MSG (email) file

Question

Hi there!
I'm looking for a way to load an email in a Oracle DB.
I mean, not all the email's body in a column, but to "parse" it in a multi column/table fashion.
Is it possible to do with a sql*loader script or an external table?
I think it is not possible, and that I must switch to XML DB.
Any idea?
Thanks,
Antonio

Answer 1

Hello,
Why don't you just load the entire MSG (email) as clob into one email_body column or whatever column name you want to use.
To load data upto 32k, you can use varchar2(32656) but its not a good idea to load clob in that manner because it's very inconsistent as length can
vary resulting in string literal too long. So you have 2 choices now, first you have to use either procedure or anonymous block to load clob data.
First Method -- I loaded alert.log successfully and you can imagine how big this file can be (5MB in my test case)
CREATE OR REPLACE DIRECTORY DIR AS '/mydirectory/logs';
DECLARE
   clob_data   CLOB;
   clob_file   BFILE;
BEGIN
   INSERT INTO t1clob
   VALUES (EMPTY_CLOB ())
   RETURNING clob_text INTO clob_data;
   clob_file   := BFILENAME ('DIR', 'wwalert_dss.log');
   DBMS_LOB.fileopen (clob_file);
   DBMS_LOB.loadfromfile (clob_data,
                          clob_file,
                          DBMS_LOB.getlength (clob_file)
   DBMS_LOB.fileclose (clob_file);
   COMMIT;
END;Second Method: Use of Sqlldr
Example of controlfile
LOAD DATA
INFILE alert.log "STR '|\n'"
REPLACE INTO  table t1clob
   clob_text char(30000000)
)Hope this helps