Error importing CSV files with 'hidden' characters using External Table

Question

Hi Folks
Bit of a strange one here.
We're well used to using the External Table method of loading data from CSV files into the database but a recent event has presented us with a problem.
We have received some CSV files that 'look' like regular CSV files but Oracle will not load them.
When we examined the CSV file using VIM on a UNIX box we saw the following 'hidden' characters between every regular character in the file.
^@So a string that looks like this when opened in Excel/Wordpad etc
"TEST","TEXT"Looks like this when exmained with VIM
^@"^@T^@E^@S^@T^@"^@,^@"^@T^@E^@X^@T^@"Has anyone come across this before?
Many thanks
Simon Gadd
Oracle 11g 11.2.0.1.0

Answer 1

Hi Simon,
^@ represents the NUL character (0x00).
So, most likely, you've got a Unicode-encoded file.
You'll have to specify the character set in the record specification (and if necessary the byte order mark), for instance :
CREATE TABLE ext_table
  col1 VARCHAR2(10),
  col2 VARCHAR2(10)
ORGANIZATION EXTERNAL
  TYPE ORACLE_LOADER
  DEFAULT DIRECTORY dump_dir
  ACCESS PARAMETERS
   RECORDS DELIMITED BY '
' CHARACTERSET 'UTF16'
  FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
  LOCATION ('dump.csv')
REJECT LIMIT UNLIMITED;http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e16536/et_params.htm#i1009499