On Thu, 11 Mar 1999, Mary T Kuehn wrote:
> Hi Ari,
> How are you?  I was hoping you might have time (and I assume you have the
> experience) to provide your opinion on Perl vs. SQL*Loader.  We want to
> create routine batch jobs to perform bulk data loads and extractions
> to/from an Oracle8 database on a HP 11 server.  Does one tool stand out
> as much more efficient than the other?  Particularly, can you speak to
> the ease of use and performance costs for each of these tools?  Thanks in
> advance!  Hope all is well!
> Mar
From a performance standpoint, SQL*Loader in direct mode is best, as it
can bypass some Oracle overhead involved in the loading process. Perl
cannot do this.

In either case, think of using the NOLOGGING option in Oracle8, which does
not produce redo log activity. This improves performance, but be aware
that you will have to restart the load from the beginning of a table in
the event of a failure mid-load.

Perl gives greater flexibility than SQL*Loader in formatting the data that
you will be loading. So, if your data is in a "free form" format than Perl
would be a good option. On the other hand, if your data is in a delimited
or fixed format, than SQL*Loader would be the best to use.

Hope that this helps!

-Ari

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