On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 7:57 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Greg Smith <greg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: >> Craig Ringer wrote: >>> For those non-Oracle users among us, what's an external table? > >> External tables let you map a text file directly to a table without >> explicitly loading it. In PostgreSQL, if you have data in a CSV file, >> usually you'd import it with COPY before you'd use it. If external >> tables were available, you'd just say there's an external table as a CSV >> file and you could start running queries against it. > > I'm finding it hard to visualize a use-case for that. We must postulate > that the table is so big that you don't want to import it, and yet you > don't feel a need to have any index on it. Which among other things > implies that every query will seqscan the whole table. Where's the > savings? I've used it mostly for importing in the past. Saves the step of loading a large file into a table with no constraints as a middle step. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
