Release Notes
                              ezldr v0.2.0
                           September 11,2016
                           =================

Ezldr is a command line utility for quickly and easily loading data 
into an Oracle database.  The intention in creating ezldr was to make loading
data from a delimited file into Oracle as simple as possible.   

It is not required for there to be an already existing table to load data into.
Ezldr will create the table for you based on the definition in the data file
being loaded into the database.  While ezldr will create the table if
necessary, you may also pre-create the target table. 


Quick Start
===========
Be sure you have an the Oracle client (11g or 12c) installed on the machine 
from which you are running ezldr.  Also, be sure to have your ORACLE_HOME
environment variable set to the base directory containing your Oracle 
client installation.

Loading data can be as simple as providing database connection information
and the name of the source data file to load.  For example,

	ezdlr myusername/mypwd@machine:1521/servicename data.csv

This will result in a table named "EZLDR_DATA" being created in the
"myusername" schema with columns named "COL0", "COL1", etc.

You can specify the column names by putting them in the first line in your 
delimited data file and then running ezldr with a "-1" option.  For example,
your data file may look something like:

EMP_ID,NAME,BIRTHDATE
1,Greg Harabedian,12/1/1965
2,John Doe,6/6/1990

You would then load this into a table named "MY_TABLE" with column names
of "EMP_ID", "NAME", and "BIRTHDATE" by running ezldr as follows:

	ezldr -d -1 -t MY_TABLE <uname>/<pwd>@machine:<port>/<service> data.csv

The "-d" ensures that the target table is dropped first and is re-created based
on the data file content.


The Details
===========

Dropping the Target Table (-d / --drop)
---------------------------------------
To drop the target table before the load takes place, you can pass the "-d" 
or "--drop" option on the command line.  This will ensure the target table
is defined based on the source data since the target table is created 
automatically if it does not already exist.  For example,

   ezldr -d ...

will drop the default target table (EZLDR_DATA).  

   ezldr -d -t MY_TABLE ...

will drop the table named "MY_TABLE"


Log File (-o / --output)
------------------------
The ouput from ezldr is logged by default to a file named "ezldr.log".  You
can specify the name of the log file by passing the "-o" or "--output" option
with a filename.  For example

   ezldr -o mylogfile.log ...
or
   ezldr --output=mylogfile.log


Progress Indicator (-p / --progress)
------------------------------------
Progress of the load can be output to the screen by passing the "-p" 
or "--progress" option along with an integer (N).  The integer specifies that 
an asterisk is output everytime N records are loaded into the database.  
For example:

   ezldr -p 1000 ...
or
   ezldr --progress=1000 ...

specifies that an asterisk (*) will be output every 1000 records loaded.


Reject Filename (-r / --rejects)
--------------------------------
Specifies the name of the file to contain records that cannot be loaded into
the database for some reason.  By default, the file containing rejected records
is named:  ezldr.rejects

   ezldr -r my_rejects.dat ...
or
   ezldr --rejects=my_rejects.dat ...


Delimiter (-s / --delim)
------------------------
Specifies the delimiter used to separate fields in the data file to be loaded.
The default delimter is a comma (,).  However, any string may be used as a 
delimiter.  For example,

   ezldr -s | ...
or
   ezldr --delim=|

if you wanted the pipe symbol to be used as the delimiter.



Target Table (-t / --target)
----------------------------
Specifies the name of the table into which data will be loaded.  If this option
is not provided, the default table name into which data is loaded is EZLDR_DATA.
For example,

   ezldr -t MY_TABLE ...
or
   ezldr --target=MY_TABLE ...


Trimming whitespace (-w / --whitespace)
---------------------------------------
Specifies that leading and trailing whitespace in the source data file are 
to be removed prior to loading the data.  For example,

   ezldr -w ...
or
   ezldr --whitespace ...


Including a Header Row (-1 / --header)
--------------------------------------
You can specify that the source data file contains a header row containing
field names using the "-1" (the one digit, not a lowercase "l").  Furthermore, 
if the target table does not exist or is dropped using the "-d" option, 
the header field names will be used as the names of the columns in the 
created target table.  For example, if your data file looks like:


NAME,ID,BIRTHDATE
Greg,1,10/01/1965

and the ezldr command run is:

   ezldr -1 -t MYTABLE ...

The resulting table would be named "MYTABLE" and would be defined as follows:

NAME		VARCHAR2(4)
ID 		NUMBER
BIRTHDATE	DATE