To use external tables successfully, find out about external table concepts, and see examples of what options are available to you to use external tables with Oracle Database.

• External Tables Concepts
  The external tables feature is a complement to existing SQL*Loader functionality. It enables you to access data in external sources as if it were in a table in the database.
• The ORACLE_LOADER Access Driver
  Learn how to control the way external tables are accessed by using the ORACLE_LOADER access driver parameters to modify the default behavior of the access driver.
• The ORACLE_DATAPUMP Access Driver
  The ORACLE_DATAPUMP access driver provides a set of access parameters that are unique to external tables of the type ORACLE_DATAPUMP.
• ORACLE_HDFS and ORACLE_HIVE Access Drivers
  With external tables, you can access data stored in HDFS and Hive tables on Hadoop and Hive clients as if that data was stored in tables in an Oracle Database.
• External Tables Examples
  Learn from these examples how to use the ORACLE_LOADER, ORACLE_DATAPUMP,ORACLE_HDFS, and ORACLE_HIVE access drivers to query data in Oracle Database and Big Data.
• ORACLE_BIGDATA Access Driver
  With the ORACLE_BIGDATA access driver, you can access data stored in object stores as if that data was stored in tables in an Oracle Database.