exasol-import-export

Exasol IMPORT and EXPORT

When to Use What

Scenario	Tool
Remote or cloud files (S3, Azure, GCS, FTP, HTTP)	SQL IMPORT / EXPORT
Files on a local machine (EXAplus/JDBC only)	FROM LOCAL CSV FILE / INTO LOCAL CSV FILE
Federated queries without copying data	Virtual Schemas

Use IMPORT/EXPORT when the data source or destination is a remote location accessible from the Exasol cluster. Execute IMPORT and EXPORT statements via the execute_exasol_write_query MCP tool. FROM LOCAL CSV FILE and INTO LOCAL CSV FILE only work from EXAplus or JDBC clients; they do not work inside UDF scripts or through the MCP server.

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Connection Objects

Connection objects store credentials for remote data sources. They are required for all cloud IMPORT/EXPORT operations.

-- Create or replace a connection
CREATE OR REPLACE CONNECTION my_conn
TO 'https://...'
USER 'username' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

-- List connections (DBA only)
SELECT * FROM EXA_DBA_CONNECTIONS;

-- Drop a connection
DROP CONNECTION my_conn;

Cloud Connection Strings

Amazon S3:

CREATE OR REPLACE CONNECTION s3_conn
TO 'https://my-bucket.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com'
USER '' IDENTIFIED BY 'S3_ACCESS_KEY=AKIA...;S3_SECRET_KEY=secret...';

Azure Blob Storage (SAS token):

CREATE OR REPLACE CONNECTION azure_conn
TO 'https://myaccount.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer'
USER '' IDENTIFIED BY 'AZURE_SAS_TOKEN=sv=2021-06-08&ss=b&srt=co...';

Azure Blob Storage (Entra ID / client secret):

CREATE OR REPLACE CONNECTION azure_conn
TO 'https://myaccount.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer'
USER 'myaccount' IDENTIFIED BY 'ClientSecret'
CLIENT ID 'app-id' TENANT ID 'tenant-id';

Google Cloud Storage:

CREATE OR REPLACE CONNECTION gcs_conn
TO 'https://storage.googleapis.com/my-bucket'
USER '' IDENTIFIED BY 'GCS_ACCESS_KEY=GOOG...;GCS_SECRET_KEY=secret...';

TLS: Append ;VERIFY=FALSE to the IDENTIFIED BY string to skip certificate verification (not recommended for production).