Summary

Here's what we've covered in this chapter:

• We've learned about the FILE_GENERIC data server and what we'd need to look out for when using different character sets in files

• We've seen how to reverse-engineer metadata from both fixed format and delimited files and how the two methods differ

• We've used an Oracle External Table without having to learn the detailed database syntax to achieve this, because the Knowledge Module we used encapsulated all that expertise and made it easily reusable

• We also saw that there are still circumstances (such as setting the necessary database permissions) when some additional preparatory work is needed before we can use platform-specific Knowledge Modules

We've integrated data from a flat file into a database. Next we're going to deal with a form of file that has massively growing significance in the business IT world, namely XML files.