Re: postgres external table

Hi,
We use Oracle's external tables to process the files (so no need to look
for the other alternatives you mentioned). We do not have access to the
data providers' network to access the files. That is why we process them
after we receive the files.
If there is a database implementation of 'external tables' in the way you
mentioned (CSV, probably excel, RSS feeds, web services, etc) at db level,
that would be great. Most ETL tools already do accept feeds of the type
you mentioned and load those into tables.
Jayadevan

From: Alban Hertroys <dalroi(at)solfertje(dot)student(dot)utwente(dot)nl>
To: Jayadevan M <Jayadevan(dot)Maymala(at)ibsplc(dot)com>
Cc: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Date: 01/19/2010 05:31 PM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] postgres external table

On 19 Jan 2010, at 12:16, Jayadevan M wrote:

> Yes. We get quite a few files as 'feeds' from external systems. Once the
files are in our network, we know that no changes will happen to those
files. We access them using Oracle external tables and process them (the
data, after some processing, end up in other real tables). If external
tables were not there, we would have had to schedule some job to load
these files.

I'm surprised you even need to download them to your network. I suspect it
would be quite possible to implement 'external tables' so that they could
be read from eg. an RSS feed. That would be a pretty slick feature.

There's a gazillion number of data formats that people would want support
for though; CSV, probably excel, RSS feeds, web services, etc.

Most of that should probably be implemented by means of stored procedures
(using the unsafe languages - pl/pythonu, pl/perlu, etc) returning TABLE
(...), which means this is in fact already possible I think? It's just
that nobody's (publicly) thought of doing this so far.

Alban Hertroys

--
Screwing up is the best way to attach something to the ceiling.

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