quinta-feira, 2 de agosto de 2012

Usando Excel como tabelas do Oracle


If you are seeking a easy way to get Oracle data into spreadsheets, see Excel-DB, the best way to quickly add Oracle data into Excel spreadsheets.
The advent of external tables in Oracle9i is exciting because it allows SQL queries to access any type of flat file, as if the data were stored inside an Oracle table. We’ll examine some caveats to this new approach, specifically:

  • The external file must be comma-delimited and stored on the server as a file with a .csv extension.
  • External spreadsheets are not good for large files because the entire file must be reread into Oracle whenever a change is saved to the spreadsheet.
  • End users must never reformat the data columns inside the spreadsheet environment.

As a review, in the last article we took the following comma-delimited flat file and accessed it in Oracle9i as an external table.


7369,SMITH,CLERK,7902,17-DEC-80,800,20
7499,ALLEN,SALESMAN,7698,20-FEB-81,1600,300,30
7521,WARD,SALESMAN,7698,22-FEB-81,1250,500,30
7566,JONES,MANAGER,7839,02-APR-81,2975,,20
7654,MARTIN,SALESMAN,7698,28-SEP-81,1250,1400,30
7698,BLAKE,MANAGER,7839,01-MAY-81,2850,,30
7782,CLARK,MANAGER,7839,09-JUN-81,2450,,10
7788,SCOTT,ANALYST,7566,19-APR-87,3000,,20
7839,KING,PRESIDENT,,17-NOV-81,5000,,10
7844,TURNER,SALESMAN,7698,08-SEP-81,1500,0,30
7876,ADAMS,CLERK,7788,23-MAY-87,1100,,20


The next code listing shows the syntax used to make the file appear as an Oracle external table.

create directory testdir as ‘u01/oracle/oradata/testdb’;
 create table emp_ext (
EMPNO    NUMBER(4),
ENAME    VARCHAR2(10),
JOB      VARCHAR2(9),
MGR      NUMBER(4),
HIREDATE DATE,
SAL      NUMBER(7,2),
COMM     NUMBER(7,2),
DEPTNO   NUMBER(2))
Organization external
(type oracle_loader
default directory testdir
access parameters (records delimited by newline
fields terminated by ‘,’)
location (‘emp_ext.csv’))
reject limit 1000;


However, when defining the flat file as an external table, the file remains on the operating system as a flat file, where it can be read and updated with a variety of tools, including spreadsheets. Using Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheets, the external table data can be read just as if it were standard spreadsheet data (Figure A)
Figure A
An external table inside an Excel spreadsheet

End users can now manage critical tables inside easy-to-use spreadsheets. Oracle immediately notices whenever a change is made to the spreadsheet. However, there are important limitations to using spreadsheets as Oracle tables, the foremost being excessive disk I/O whenever the spreadsheet has changed. Let’s take a closer look.

Internals of external tables
It’s important to recognize that Oracle data inside spreadsheets will not be accessible as quickly as internal row data. Oracle can’t maintain row-level locking because the operating system, not Oracle, is in command. When a spreadsheet is defined as an external table, Oracle has no way of knowing when individual row data changes. The operating system will only tell Oracle that the entire spreadsheet has changed.
In addition, data blocks that are read from an external table are not placed inside the Oracle data buffers. The dictionary query in Listing A demonstrates that Oracle doesn’t read the external table rows into the RAM data cache.

select
       bp.name           pool_name,
       ob.name           object,
       ob.subname    sub_name,
       sum(buf_count) buffer_blocks
from
       (select set_ds, obj, count(*) buf_count
       from x$bh group by set_ds, obj)    bh,
       obj$                               ob,
       x$kcbwds                           ws,
       v$buffer_pool                      bp
where
   ob.dataobj# = bh.obj
and
   ob.owner# > 0
and
   bh.set_ds = ws.addr
and
   ws.set_id between bp.lo_setid and bp.hi_setid
group by
       bp.name,
       ob.name,
       ob.subname
order by
       bp.name,
       ob.name,
       ob.subname
;


As we see in Listing below, selections from our table don’t reside in the data buffers following a SQL query.


SQL> select ename from pubs.emp_ext;
 
SQL> @buf_data
 
POOL_NAME OBJECT                   SUB_NAME                   BLOCKS           
--------- ------------------------ ------------------------ --------           
DEFAULT   PUBLISHER                                                2           
          REPCAT$_REPPROP                                          1           
          SNS$BINDINGS$                                            2           
          SNS$INODE$                                               2           
          SNS$NODE_INDEX                                           1           
          SNS$REFADDR$                                             3           
          SNS$REFADDR_INDEX                                        3           
          SYS_C001042                                              1           
          SYS_C001414                                              1


Oracle doesn’t make it clear whether a separate buffering mechanism is used for external tables. With this lack of buffering, Oracle9i must reread the entire spreadsheet for each SQL invocation that accesses the external table.

To maintain data integrity, Oracle must detect when the spreadsheet data has changed, but there is no way to discover when specific spreadsheet values have changed. When Oracle detects that the flat file has been updated, all data in the RAM data buffers becomes invalid, and the entire spreadsheet must be reread. This is the primary reason external tables are not efficient for large volumes of data.

Because Oracle reads operating system files in data blocks, we can compute the amount of disk I/O by determining the number of spreadsheet blocks with a simple shell script. In this script, we know the Oracle database has 8-KB block sizes:


bytes=`ls -al|grep emp_ext.csv|awk '{ print $5 }'`
num_bytes=`expr $bytes`
blocks=`expr $num_bytes / 8192`
echo $blocks


This script will tell us exactly how many disk reads are required to access the Oracle external table whenever a change is made.

Security for external table files
Any saved change to the spreadsheet causes the entire spreadsheet to be read again into Oracle from the disk. Spreadsheets can be password-protected at the operating system level, and they can be marked read-only with the following DOS command:


c:\docs\pubsdb\queries> attrib +r emp_ext.csv

In UNIX, we can use this command to make the spreadsheet read-only for everyone except the owner of the spreadsheet:

chmod 744 emp_ext.csv

This ensures the file will not be updated, except by authorized users. It makes sure that Oracle caches the data in an efficient manner. Once defined to Oracle, the spreadsheet will be accessible both through Oracle and the Excel spreadsheet.
Limitations of comma-delimited spreadsheet files
In order for Oracle to successfully read comma-delimited (csv) files, it’s important to avoid making spreadsheet-specific changes because Excel will change the internal storage of the column to accommodate the formatting. For example, let’s assume that a manager reformats the SALARY column for comma display, as shown below.

 

Reformatting a comma-delimited (csv) spreadsheet


Once the file has been saved, Oracle can no longer read the SALARY column because the column has been stored in quotes. To Oracle, this defines the column as a character:

7369,SMITH,CLERK,7902,17-Dec-80,800,20,
7499,ALLEN,SALESMAN,7698,20-Feb-81,"1,600",300,30
7521,WARD,SALESMAN,7698,22-Feb-81,"1,250",500,30
7566,JONES,MANAGER,7839,2-Apr-81,"2,975",,20
7654,MARTIN,SALESMAN,7698,28-Sep-81,"1,250",1400,30
7698,BLAKE,MANAGER,7839,1-May-81,"2,850",,30
7782,CLARK,MANAGER,7839,9-Jun-81,"2,450",,10
7788,SCOTT,ANALYST,7566,19-Apr-87,"3,000",,20
7839,KING,PRESIDENT,,17-Nov-81,"5,000",,10
7844,TURNER,SALESMAN,7698,8-Sep-81,"1,500",0,30
7876,ADAMS,CLERK,7788,23-May-87,"1,100",,20


The accidental reformatting of the file makes it unreadable by Oracle. You must take special care to instruct end users to never change the formatting.

Click here to learn how to make Oracle external tables accept updates.

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