The statements on this page are deprecated as of v23.1 and will be removed in a future release. To move data into CockroachDB, use IMPORT INTO
or COPY FROM
. For more details, see Move your data to CockroachDB.
The IMPORT
statement imports the following types of data into CockroachDB:
To import CSV, Avro, or delimited data files, see IMPORT INTO
.
Certain IMPORT TABLE
statements that defined the table schema inline are not supported in v22.1 and later versions. These include running IMPORT TABLE ... CREATE USING
and IMPORT TABLE
with any non-bundle format (CSV
, DELIMITED
, PGCOPY
, or AVRO
) data types.
To import data into a new table, use CREATE TABLE
followed by IMPORT INTO
.
IMPORT INTO
supports CSV/TSV, Avro, and delimited data files. For an example, read Import into a new table from a CSV file.
Considerations
IMPORT
is a blocking statement. To run an import job asynchronously, use theDETACHED
option.IMPORT
cannot be used within a rolling upgrade.- Certain
IMPORT TABLE
statements that defined the table schema inline are not supported in v22.1 and later versions. These include runningIMPORT TABLE ... CREATE USING
andIMPORT TABLE
with any non-bundle format (CSV
,DELIMITED
,PGCOPY
, orAVRO
) data types. Instead, useCREATE TABLE
andIMPORT INTO
; see this example for more detail. - For instructions and working examples on how to migrate data from other databases, see the Migration Overview.
IMPORT
cannot directly import data toREGIONAL BY ROW
tables that are part of multi-region databases. Instead, useIMPORT INTO
which supports importing intoREGIONAL BY ROW
tables.
Optimize import operations in your applications by following our Import Performance Best Practices.
Required privileges
Table privileges
The user must have the CREATE
privileges on the target database.
Source privileges
New in v22.2:
You can grant a user the EXTERNALIOIMPLICITACCESS
system-level privilege to interact with external resources that require implicit access.
Either the EXTERNALIOIMPLICITACCESS
system-level privilege or the admin
role is required for the following scenarios:
- Interacting with a cloud storage resource using
IMPLICIT
authentication. - Using a custom endpoint on S3.
- Using the
cockroach nodelocal upload
command. - Using HTTP or HTTPS.
No special privilege is required for:
- Interacting with an Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage resource using
SPECIFIED
credentials. Azure Storage is alwaysSPECIFIED
by default. - Using Userfile storage.
We recommend using cloud storage for CockroachDB operations. You also need to ensure that the permissions at your storage destination are configured for the bulk operation. See Storage Permissions for a list of the necessary permissions that each bulk operation requires.
While Cockroach Labs actively tests Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Azure Storage, we do not test S3-compatible services (e.g., MinIO, Red Hat Ceph).
Synopsis
Parameters
For import from dump file
Parameter | Description |
---|---|
table_name |
The name of the table you want to import/create. Use this when the dump file contains a specific table. Leave out TABLE table_name FROM when the dump file contains an entire database. |
import_format |
PGDUMP OR MYSQLDUMP |
file_location |
The URL of a dump file you want to import. |
WITH kv_option_list |
Control your import's behavior with these options. |
Import options
You can control the IMPORT
process's behavior using any of the following optional key-value pairs as a kv_option
. To set multiple import options, use a comma-separated list (see examples).
Key | Context |
Value |
---|---|---|
decompress |
General | The decompression codec to be used: gzip , bzip , auto , or none . Default: 'auto' , which guesses based on file extension (.gz , .bz , .bz2 ). none disables decompression. |
row_limit |
General | The number of rows to import. Useful for doing a test run of an import and finding errors quickly. This option will import the first n rows from each table in the dump file. |
skip_foreign_keys |
PGDUMP , MYSQLDUMP |
Ignore foreign key constraints in the dump file's DDL. Default: Off . May be necessary to import a table with unsatisfied foreign key constraints from a full database dump. |
max_row_size |
PGDUMP |
Override limit on line size. Default: 0.5MB . This setting may need to be tweaked if your PostgreSQL dump file has extremely long lines, for example as part of a COPY statement. |
ignore_unsupported_statements |
PGDUMP |
Ignore SQL statements in the dump file that are unsupported by CockroachDB. |
log_ignored_statements |
PGDUMP |
Log unsupported statements when using ignore_unsupported_statements to a specified destination (i.e., cloud storage or userfile storage). |
DETACHED |
N/A | When an import runs in DETACHED mode, it will execute asynchronously and the job ID will be returned immediately without waiting for the job to finish. Note that with DETACHED specified, further job information and the job completion status will not be returned. For more on the differences between the returned job data, see the example below. To check on the job status, use the SHOW JOBS statement. To run an import within a transaction, use the DETACHED option. |
For examples showing how to use these options, see the Examples section below.
For instructions and working examples showing how to migrate data from other databases and formats, see the Migration Overview.
Requirements
Before you begin
Before using IMPORT
, you should have:
- The schema of the table you want to import.
- The data you want to import, preferably hosted on cloud storage. This location must be equally accessible to all nodes using the same import file location. This is necessary because the
IMPORT
statement is issued once by the client, but is executed concurrently across all nodes of the cluster. For more information, see Import file location.
For more information on details to consider when running an IMPORT
, see Considerations.
Import targets
Imported tables must not exist and must be created in the IMPORT
statement with the schema and data importing from the same source. If the table you want to import already exists, you must drop it with DROP TABLE
or use IMPORT INTO
.
You can specify the target database in the table name in the IMPORT
statement. If it's not specified there, the active database in the SQL session is used.
Create table
Your IMPORT
statement must reference an import file that specifies the schema of the data you want to import. You have several options:
Load a file that already contains a
CREATE TABLE
statement. For an example, see Import a PostgreSQL database dump below.Use
CREATE TABLE
followed byIMPORT INTO
. For an example, see Import into a new table from a CSV file.
We also recommend specifying all secondary indexes you want to use in the CREATE TABLE
statement. It is possible to add secondary indexes later, but it is significantly faster to specify them during import. For large imports, read additional guidance in Import into a schema with secondary indexes.
Other support considerations include:
-
IMPORT
supports computed columns for PostgreSQL dump files only. - By default, the PostgreSQL and MySQL import formats support foreign keys. However, the most common dependency issues during import are caused by unsatisfied foreign key relationships that cause errors like
pq: there is no unique constraint matching given keys for referenced table tablename
. You can avoid these issues by adding theskip_foreign_keys
option to yourIMPORT
statement as needed. Ignoring foreign constraints will also speed up data import.
Available storage
Each node in the cluster is assigned an equal part of the imported data, and so must have enough temp space to store it. In addition, data is persisted as a normal table, and so there must also be enough space to hold the final, replicated data. The node's first-listed/default store
directory must have enough available storage to hold its portion of the data.
On cockroach start
, if you set --max-disk-temp-storage
, it must also be greater than the portion of the data a node will store in temp space.
Import file location
CockroachDB uses the URL provided to construct a secure API call to the service you specify. The URL structure depends on the type of file storage you are using. For more information, see the following:
New in v22.2:
You can create an external connection to represent an external storage or sink URI. This allows you to specify the external connection's name in statements rather than the provider-specific URI. For detail on using external connections, see the CREATE EXTERNAL CONNECTION
page.
Table users and privileges
Imported tables are treated as new tables, so you must GRANT
privileges to them.
Performance
- All nodes are used during the import job, which means all nodes' CPU and RAM will be partially consumed by the
IMPORT
task in addition to serving normal traffic. - To improve performance, import at least as many files as you have nodes (i.e., there is at least one file for each node to import) to increase parallelism.
- To further improve performance, order the data in the imported files by primary key and ensure the primary keys do not overlap between files.
- An import job will pause if a node in the cluster runs out of disk space. See Viewing and controlling import jobs for information on resuming and showing the progress of import jobs.
- An import job will pause instead of entering a
failed
state if it continues to encounter transient errors once it has retried a maximum number of times. Once the import has paused, you can either resume or cancel it.
For more detail on optimizing import performance, see Import Performance Best Practices.
Viewing and controlling import jobs
After CockroachDB initiates an import, you can view its progress with SHOW JOBS
and on the Jobs page of the DB Console, and you can control it with PAUSE JOB
, RESUME JOB
, and CANCEL JOB
.
If initiated correctly, the statement returns when the import is finished or if it encounters an error. In some cases, the import can continue after an error has been returned (the error message will tell you that the import has resumed in the background).
When resumed, paused imports now continue from their internally recorded progress instead of starting over.
Examples
The following examples make use of:
- Amazon S3 connection strings. For guidance on connecting to other storage options or using other authentication parameters instead, read Use Cloud Storage.
- The default
AUTH=specified
parameter. For guidance on usingAUTH=implicit
authentication with Amazon S3 buckets instead, read Use Cloud Storage for Bulk Operations — Authentication.
Also, note the following features for connecting and authenticating to cloud storage:
- New in v22.2:
External connections, which allow you to represent an external storage or sink URI. You can then specify the external connection's name in statements rather than the provider-specific URI. For detail on using external connections, see the
CREATE EXTERNAL CONNECTION
page. - New in v22.2: Assume role authentication, which allows you to limit the control specific users have over your storage buckets. See Assume role authentication for more information.
Import a PostgreSQL database dump
IMPORT PGDUMP 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.sql}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
WITH ignore_unsupported_statements;
For this command to succeed, you need to have created the dump file with specific flags to pg_dump
, and use the WITH ignore_unsupported_statements
clause. For more information, see Migrate from PostgreSQL.
Import a table from a PostgreSQL database dump
IMPORT TABLE employees
FROM PGDUMP 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{employees-full.sql}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
WITH skip_foreign_keys WITH ignore_unsupported_statements;
If the table schema specifies foreign keys into tables that do not exist yet, the WITH skip_foreign_keys
option may be needed. For more information, see the list of import options.
For this command to succeed, you need to have created the dump file with specific flags to pg_dump
. For more information, see Migrate from PostgreSQL.
Import a MySQL database dump
IMPORT MYSQLDUMP 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{employees-full.sql}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}';
For more detailed information about importing data from MySQL, see Migrate from MySQL.
Import a table from a MySQL database dump
IMPORT TABLE employees
FROM MYSQLDUMP 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{employees-full.sql}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}' WITH skip_foreign_keys;
If the table schema specifies foreign keys into tables that do not exist yet, the WITH skip_foreign_keys
option may be needed. For more information, see the list of import options.
For more detailed information about importing data from MySQL, see Migrate from MySQL.
Import a limited number of rows
The row_limit
option determines the number of rows to import. This option will import the first n rows from each table in the dump file. It is useful for finding errors quickly before executing a more time- and resource-consuming import. Imported tables can be inspected for their schema and data, but must be dropped before running the actual import.
IMPORT PGDUMP
's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customers.sql}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
WITH
row_limit = '10';
Import a compressed file
CockroachDB chooses the decompression codec based on the filename (the common extensions .gz
or .bz2
and .bz
) and uses the codec to decompress the file during import.
IMPORT TABLE employees
FROM PGDUMP 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{employees-full.sql.gz}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}';
Optionally, you can use the decompress
option to specify the codec to be used for decompressing the file during import:
IMPORT TABLE employees
FROM PGDUMP 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{employees-full.sql}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
WITH decompress = 'gzip';
Run an import within a transaction
The DETACHED
option allows an import to be run asynchronously, returning the job ID immediately once initiated. You can run imports within transactions by specifying the DETACHED
option.
To use the DETACHED
option with IMPORT
in a transaction:
BEGIN;
CREATE DATABASE newdb;
SET DATABASE = newdb;
IMPORT TABLE employees FROM PGDUMP 's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{employees-full.sql}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}' WITH DETACHED;
COMMIT;
The job ID is returned immediately without waiting for the job to finish:
job_id
----------------------
592786066399264769
(1 row)
Without the DETACHED
option, IMPORT
will block the SQL connection until the job completes. Once finished, the job status and more detailed job data is returned:
job_id | status | fraction_completed | rows | index_entries | bytes
---------------------+-----------+--------------------+------+---------------+--------
652471804772712449 | succeeded | 1 | 50 | 0 | 4911
(1 row)
Import a table from a local file
You can import a file from nodelocal
, which is the external IO directory on a node's local file system. To import from nodelocal
, a nodeID
is required and the data files will be in the extern
directory of the specified node.
The file system backup location on the NFS drive is relative to the path specified by the --external-io-dir
flag set while starting the node. If the flag is set to disabled
, then imports from local directories and NFS drives are disabled. Use self
if you do not want to specify a nodeID
, and the individual data files will be in the extern
directories of arbitrary nodes; however, to work correctly, each node must have the --external-io-dir
flag point to the same NFS mount or other network-backed, shared storage.
If a nodeID
is provided, the data files to import will be in the extern
directory of the specified node:
cd /tmp/node2 && ls
000355.log cockroach-temp700212211
000357.log cockroach.advertise-addr
000359.sst cockroach.advertise-sql-addr
COCKROACHDB_VERSION cockroach.http-addr
CURRENT cockroach.listen-addr
IDENTITY cockroach.sql-addr
LOCK extern
MANIFEST-000010 logs
OPTIONS-000005 temp-dirs-record.txt
auxiliary
cd /tmp/node2/extern && ls
customers.sql
Then, specify which node to access by including the nodeID
in the IMPORT
statement:
IMPORT TABLE customers FROM PGDUMP 'nodelocal://2/customers.sql';
You can also use the cockroach nodelocal upload
command to upload a file to the external IO directory on a node's (the gateway node, by default) local file system.
Import data into your CockroachDB Cloud cluster
You can import data into your CockroachDB Cloud cluster using either userfile
or cloud storage:
Import using userfile
To import from userfile
, first create the table that you would like to import into:
CREATE TABLE customers (
id INT,
dob DATE,
first_name STRING,
last_name STRING,
joined DATE
);
Then, use IMPORT INTO
to import data into the table:
IMPORT INTO customers (id, dob, first_name, last_name, joined)
CSV DATA ('userfile:///test-data.csv');
userfile:///
references the default path (userfile://defaultdb.public.userfiles_$user/
).
job_id | status | fraction_completed | rows | index_entries | bytes
---------------------+-----------+--------------------+--------+---------------+-----------
599865027685613569 | succeeded | 1 | 300024 | 0 | 13389972
(1 row)
For more import options, see IMPORT INTO
.
Import using cloud storage
To import a table into your cluster:
> IMPORT TABLE customers (
id UUID PRIMARY KEY,
name TEXT,
INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('s3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customer-data}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}')
;
Known limitation
IMPORT
can sometimes fail with a "context canceled" error, or can restart itself many times without ever finishing. If this is happening, it is likely due to a high amount of disk contention. This can be mitigated by setting the kv.bulk_io_write.max_rate
cluster setting to a value below your max disk write speed. For example, to set it to 10MB/s, execute:
> SET CLUSTER SETTING kv.bulk_io_write.max_rate = '10MB';