Hello everybody

If I connect to a database "Database1" using ISQL, I can write something like:

OUTPUT MyFile.DAT;

SELECT * FROM MyTable;

OUTPUT;

And all the rows of "MyTable" will go to the text file "MyFile.DAT". That's ok and works fine.

But now, I want to connect to "Database2", which also have a table called "MyTable" and with the same structure.

After that, I want to insert into "MyTable" (of "Database2") the rows contained in "MyFile.DAT"

How can I do such thing without a lot of effort writing an INSERT command in each line of "MyFile.DAT"?

Greetings.

Walter.

Hi Walter. I'm not directly answering your question (mainly due to not using isql myself, so I don't know the answer), but I can think of two alternative ways.

(1) (the more standard answer) Make sure your output file is in a fixed length format, then create an external table for this file, transfer the data using INSERT INTO "MyTable" SELECT * FROM <FileDefinedWithExternalTable> and then finally drop the external table.

(2) Use qli rather than isql to transfer data directly using something similar to this recipe:
https://www.ibphoenix.com/resources/documents/how_to/doc_42
qli is an ancient part of InterBase, probably used before SQL was invented, you can find it in the same directory as isql.

I've only used qli once many years ago (probably on Fb 0.9.4 or 1.5), but it worked nicely when I needed it. Though I don't think qli has been updated for the last few Firebird versions, so maybe it doesn't work anymore. And you may have a hard time finding information about it beyond the document referred to above. Though I suppose:

ready "Database1" as src;
ready "Database2" as trg;
trg."MyTable" = src."MyTable";

doesn't need much explanation and should be simple for you to try on a test database. I expect it to replace the target rather than add to it (though I don't know), but the one time I used qli, I think I was transferring to an empty table.

HTH,
Set