Excel file UTL_FILE

Question

Can we read Excel file using UTL_FILE? is there a way i could read xsl file?

Answer 1

user7404990 wrote:
Can we read Excel file using UTL_FILE? is there a way i could read xsl file?In a little more detail to SY's answer...
UTL_FILE can read text or binary files.
An xsl file is a binary file, so yes you could read that binary data using UTL_FILE and then do what with it? store it in a BLOB column on the database maybe, but what use is that.
I'm guessing when you say you want to read an Excel file, you want to actually get at the data in the spreadsheets, not just read the whole binary file as binary data. In that case, no, UTL_FILE cannot read the user data out of an Excel file.
Oracle provides Heterogeneous Services (HS) to allow you to connect to other things using e.g. ODBC connectivity. Microsoft happen to provide an ODBC driver for Excel, so, you can actually set up oracle to connect to the Excel workbook as if it's a database. These are the general steps you would do to achieve that...
1- On the Oracle database server (Windows server) Go to Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Data Sources (ODBC)>System DSN and create a data source with appropriate driver. Name it EXCL.
2- In %ORACLE_HOME%\Network\Admin\Tnsnames.ora fie add entry:
EXCL =
  (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS_LIST =
      (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = 10.12.0.24)(PORT = 1521))
    (CONNECT_DATA =
      (SID = EXCL)
    (HS = OK)
  )Here SID is the name of data source that you have just created.
3- In %ORACLE_HOME%\Network\Admin\Listener.ora file add:
(SID_DESC =
  (PROGRAM = hsodbc)
  (SID_NAME = <hs_sid>)
  (ORACLE_HOME = <oracle home>)
)under SID_LIST_LISTENER like:
SID_LIST_LISTENER =
  (SID_LIST =
    (SID_DESC =
      (SID_NAME = PLSExtProc)
      (ORACLE_HOME = d:\ORA9DB)
      (PROGRAM = extproc)
    (SID_DESC =
      (GLOBAL_DBNAME = ORA9DB)
      (ORACLE_HOME = d:\ORA9DB)
      (SID_NAME = ORA9DB)
    (SID_DESC =
      (PROGRAM = hsodbc)
      (SID_NAME = EXCL)
      (ORACLE_HOME = D:\ora9db)
  ) Dont forget to reload the listener
C:\> lsnrctl reload4- In %ORACLE_HOME%\hs\admin create init<HS_SID>.ora. For our sid EXCL we create file initexcl.ora.
In this file set following two parameters:
HS_FDS_CONNECT_INFO = excl
HS_FDS_TRACE_LEVEL = 05- Now connect to Oracle database and create database link with following command:
SQL> CREATE DATABASE LINK excl
2 USING 'excl'
3 /
Database link created.Now you can perform query against this database like you would for any remote database.
SQL> SELECT table_name FROM all_tables@excl;
TABLE_NAME
DEPT
EMPNote:
1) Each worksheet in the Excel workbook is taken to be a "table" with the worksheet name being the table name (must not exceed the 30 character limit of Oracle, as Excel allows 32 chrs).
2) The first row on the worksheet provides the column names for the table (again, limited to 30 characters)
3) The second and subsequent rows provide the actual rows of data on the table.
4) The above works for an Oracle server running on Windows. It's possible to set up something similar on Unix boxes, but this would require obtaining some specific odbc drivers for that particular operating system and setting them up according to that flavour of unix.
Or refer to this Article...
http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:4406709207206