Loading from a Delimited File to a Database Table with the Same Schema

You can avoid defining the schema of an external table if it has the same schema as the database table.

About this task

Consider loading a delimited ASCII text file into a table with the following schema: 
TABLE employee (
   name CHAR(18) NOT NULL,
   hiredate DATE DEFAULT TODAY,
   address VARCHAR(40),
   empno INTEGER);
The SQL statements used to load data into the employee table would be as follows: 
CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE emp_ext 
SAMEAS employee
USING (
   DATAFILES ("DISK:/work2/mydir/emp.dat"),
    REJECTFILE "/work2/mydir/emp.rej" 
    );
INSERT INTO employee SELECT * FROM emp_ext;

The external table has the same name, type, and default for each column because the CREATE statement includes the SAMEAS keyword. The default format is delimited, so no format keyword is required.

Delimited files are ASCII by default. The default row delimiter is an end-of-line character unless you use the RECORDEND keyword to specify a different delimiter when you created the external table. (The RECORDEND keyword works for delimited format only.)