Thursday, October 01, 2009

Workaround for SQL*Loader-297/ORA-01756 problem

Upgraded Oracle SQL*Loader (a.k.a. sqlldr) from a 9i version to a 10gR2 version on two computers, with release 10.2.0.1.0 on one computer and release 10.2.0.4.0 on the other.

Some ctl files have the following line:

flag "'N'",

When I'd run sqlldr release 10.2.0.4.0 or the 9i version of sqlldr, the above line caused no problems.

But when I'd run it on release 10.2.0.1.0, I'd get this error:

SQL*Loader-297: Invalid syntax or bind variable in SQL string for column FLAG.
ORA-01756: quoted string not properly terminated

I found I was able to get the ctl files to work with release 10.2.0.1.0 by changing the problematic line to this: