MacLochlainns Weblog » virtual directory http://blog.mclaughlinsoftware.com Michael McLaughlin's Technical Blog Mon, 06 Sep 2010 21:21:48 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 How you can read an external directory list from SQL http://blog.mclaughlinsoftware.com/2008/06/05/how-you-can-read-an-external-directory-list-from-sql/ http://blog.mclaughlinsoftware.com/2008/06/05/how-you-can-read-an-external-directory-list-from-sql/#comments Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:45:50 +0000 maclochlainn http://maclochlainn.wordpress.com/?p=31 A post last week in the SQL & PL/SQL Forum caught my eye because it referenced an old post by Tom Kyte. That post shows you how to read an external file system directory using Java library wrapped by a PL/SQL program unit. The problem I have with the solution is that it writes the data to a table, and then it reads the file list from the table. This type of design requires cleaning up the table after running the function or procedure.

An improvement on Tom’s old solution would be to return the list as a SQL collection data type. A few searches on the Internet and of the Oracle documentation didn’t unearth an example. The referenced code and instructions show you how to implement the necessary pieces with a PL/SQL wrapper function.

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