Jared using a named pipe did work and it seems sql loader has a feature if you put a - in the infile field it will also take standard input. Thanks, Ken _____ From: Jared Still [mailto:jkstill@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Monday, February 05, 2007 9:30 PM To: kennaim@xxxxxxxxx Cc: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Sqlldr and standard input Have you tried it? It should work similar to what is done for imp/exp to a pipe. You are on a *nix system aren't you? assuming a gzipped file: mkfifo sqlldr.pipe gunzip --stdout myfile.gz > sqlldr.pipe & sqlldr parfile=yourparfile.par the .ctl should use the pipe name for the infile. eg. load data infile 'sqlldr.pipe' into table t1 fields terminated by ',' optionally enclosed by '"' ( V1 ) Jared On 2/5/07, Ken Naim <kennaim@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: I have googled and metalinked unsuccessfully for how to use standard input to provide data to sql loader. The purpose of this desire is to not have to uncompress, load and then recompress files for loading. Thanks, Ken -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- Jared Still Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist