Use Oracle directory object in SQL*loader?

Question

Hi All,
We have a bunch of flatfiles that need to be read on a daily basis. We are using SQL*loader to read these files into Oracle.
The files arrive into a different directory every day ( /filesDDMMYY/ ). We now manually copy these files into the static directory which is pointed to in our ctl file. I was wondering if it's possible to use an Oracle Directory object to point to these data files, in stead of the pysical directory we use now?
Now we use: INFILE './sources/mydata.txt' , but I would like to make this a dynamic refrence to a directory with a different name
I searched the documentation and the internet quite extensively, but can not get an answer if it's possible to use directory objects in conjunction with sql loader.
Any help or suggestions would be appriciated.
Greetz,
Toin.
Message was edited by:
Toin ~ corrected typo

Answer 1

you can remove the INFILE parameter from the CTL files, and instead specify it on the command line (DATA=./sources...).
obviously this would still require changing every ctl file, but you would only need to do it once, not everytime you change a directory.
of course, the shell script which runs sqlldr would need to change. however, you could make the shell script more robust, by having it connect to sqlplus to look up the actual directory path from ALL_DIRECTORIES, and then use that when calling sqlldr.