Companies today make use of the powerful querying capability of relational (SQL) databases; however, companies often store data using a variety of other methods such as flat files or non-relational databases. Loading this type of data into a relational database can require additional costly and time consuming tasks such as writing custom programs that retrieve and manipulate the data before it is loaded. For example, if a SQL database does not support a particular data type being used in a programming language, the data will have to be converted into a format that can be loaded into the SQL database. SQL table definitions will also need to be created to define the type of data that is being loaded. Additionally, you will have to maintain/update these custom programs and table definitions each time the original data changes in format/layout.

Datatek/SQL Loader removes the burden of writing and maintaining custom extraction and transformation programs. Datatek/SQL Loader can use existing copy/include files to generate SQL table definitions, as well as to extract the data from its source and load it into the SQL database. When used in tandem with TBAM-Sort, additional transformations and manipulations (e.g., selective deletes) can be made to data before loading it. For more information about Datatek/SQL-Loader, contact a Datatek representative.