Data Movement Utilities Guide and Reference

Import Overview

The import utility inserts data from an input file into a table or updatable view. If the table or view receiving the imported data already contains data, you can either replace or append to the existing data.

The following information is required when importing data:

• The path and the name of the input file.
• The name or alias of the target table or view.
• The format of the data in the input file. This format can be IXF, WSF, DEL, or ASC. See Appendix C, Export/Import/Load Utility File Formats.
• Whether the input data is to be inserted into the table or view, or whether existing data in the table or view is to be updated or replaced by the input data.
• A message file name, if the utility is invoked through the application programming interface (API), sqluimpr.
• When working with typed tables, you may need to provide the method or order by which to progress through all of the structured types. The order of proceeding top-to-bottom, left-to-right through all of the supertables and subtables in the hierarchy is called the traverse order. This order is important when moving data between table hierarchies, because it determines where the data is moved in relation to other data.

  When working with typed tables, you may also need to provide the subtable list. This list shows into which subtables and attributes to import data.

  For more information, see Moving Data Between Typed Tables.

You can also specify:

• The method to use for importing the data: column location, column name, or relative column position.
• The number of rows to INSERT before committing the changes to the table. Requesting periodic COMMITs reduces the number of rows that are lost if a failure and a ROLLBACK occur during the import operation. It also prevents the DB2 logs from getting full when processing a large input file.
• The number of file records to skip before beginning the import operation. If an error occurs, you can restart the import operation immediately following the last row that was successfully imported and committed.
• The names of the columns within the table or view into which the data is to be inserted.