Fast Extract for Oracle Now Runs on Windows

Bulk unload tool for data warehousing runs on Win2K/3, XP, Vista

• By James E. Powell
• 09/26/2007

Innovative Routines International Inc. (IRI) today announced a new version of Fast Extract (FACT) for Oracle that runs on Windows. The company also offers a UNIX version of the software.

FACT rapidly unloads large Oracle tables in parallel to portable flat files in fixed- or variable-length formats and can combine native SQL SELECT features. FACT consumes uses few system resources so it doesn't require load balancing. The company claims that initial performance tests show FACT's rows-per-second unload rate is twice that of Oracle's spool command running on a Windows XP laptop

FACT can create the layout metadata of the extract files in the syntax of CoSort's Sort Control Language (SortCL) tool, which is also an IRI product, for transformation, protection, reporting, and pre-load sorting as well as Oracle SQL*Loader utility (for bulk loads). The metadata files help IT build extract, transform, and load (ETL) streams from source to target tables.

IRI says users running FACT, SortCL, and SQL*Loader together will enjoy speedy high-volume reorg, migration, replication, and reporting performance. In a company statement, IRI support manager Rob Howard said that “by using these tools in the file system, users can eliminate database processing bottlenecks and can create multiple targets in multiple formats -- simultaneously.” The company cites a test in which a FACT > CoSort > SQL*Loader ETL operation on a new, 25-million row sorted the table seven times faster than the equivalent SQL*Plus "order by" table insert process.

“On an HP t5500 (Intel Core Duo with 2GB of RAM), FACT’s unload results piped to CoSort’s parallel sort, which fed a direct path load -- all in 7 minutes. Oracle took 49 minutes to sort and build the same table internally,” according to Howard.

For more information, visit http://www.cosort.com or call 1-800-333-SORT.