At 11:11 AM 4/06/2004 -0400, you wrote:

>Helen (or anyone else that can help) :)
>
>How does the CREATE TABLE <table> EXTERNAL handle importing of records
>that already exist? Do they get rejected and, if so, does that mean the
>entire import gets dumped?

Right, let's start by understanding that opening an external file as a
table is not "importing". To import, you would treat the external table as
"source" and perform inserts on a "target" by selecting from the external
table, often with casting and other massaging.

The syntax is broadly

insert into target ( <list-of-columns>)
select <corresponding-values> from source

As I said before, forget about any syntax for inline pumping. Firebird
external files are "external virtual tables" (EVTs) in post-millennium
SQLspeak. Though Firebird's old granny InterBase had them for aeons, they
are the latest wiz-bang thing in SQL 3 and being touted in that Oracle
DreamClouds thingy as "advanced".

Actually, it appears there's code sitting in the engine there since about
1993 that would enable an EVT to be readable from and writable to just
about any text format. It was a thing that never got released because the
guy who was developing it left InterBase and no-one else took it up.

/heLen