OWB Windows Client Accessing Unix Directory

Question

Can a OWB client running on a Windows machine access a Unix Directory Structure?
I'm creating a module for Source flat files using my OWB Client on Windows 2000. Can I access the Unix Direcory structure for these files using the OWB Windows Client.

Answer 1

There are several issues that you may be concerned about here...
First, When you create the Flat File Module you are given the opportunity to enter a directory for this module. This directory is used when importing File metadata via a process OWB calls "sampling". At the time of the "sampling" your OWB client requires direct access to the actual physical flat file. If you are running the OWB client on a Windows PC and wish to access the physical files stored in on a unix machine, you will need some kind of "protocol handler" to make this work. NFS software (i.e. 3rd party) [ as discussed previosly] is the recommended (i.e. highest overall performance, etc) access method. There are others, Samba (which is free, would need to be installed on your unix machine) makes unix directories exported like Windows "shares". These steps are necessary to get direct access to the physical data so that it can be read and help guide you on the way to defining the metadata (ie structure) of the file. If you switch to using a Unix client, the "connection" information for the Flat File Module will have to be "re-entered" to be relative to that particular host.
Second, When you deploy a map which uses the flat file as a source, a SQL*Loader control file will be created to read the data and populate a target table. Im the production versions of OWB, you need to configure the map and supply physical connection information relative to the machine on which the SQL*Loader control file is to be run. So if your database is hosted on a Unix machine, and that is where the SQL*Loader process is to be executed, the "path" information would need to be specified in the unix format and from the database's perspective.