IMPORT - CockroachDB

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 or .

The IMPORT imports the following types of data into CockroachDB:

To import CSV, Avro, or delimited data files, see .

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 followed by .IMPORT INTO supports CSV/TSV, Avro, and delimited data files. For an example, read .

Considerations

IMPORT is a blocking statement. To run an import job asynchronously, use the DETACHED option.
IMPORT cannot be used within a .
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. Instead, use CREATE TABLE and IMPORT INTO; see this for more detail.
For instructions and working examples on how to migrate data from other databases, see the .
IMPORT cannot directly import data to REGIONAL BY ROW tables that are part of . Instead, use which supports importing into REGIONAL BY ROW tables.

Optimize import operations in your applications by following our .

Required privileges

Table privileges

The user must have the CREATE on the target database.

Source privileges

You can grant a user the EXTERNALIOIMPLICITACCESS to interact with external resources that require implicit access. Either the EXTERNALIOIMPLICITACCESS or the role is required for the following scenarios:

Interacting with a cloud storage resource using .
Using a custom endpoint on S3.
Using the command.
Using or HTTPS.

No special privilege is required for:

Interacting with an Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage resource using SPECIFIED credentials. Azure Storage is always SPECIFIED by default.
Using storage.

We recommend using . You also need to ensure that the permissions at your storage destination are configured for the operation. See 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., or ).
`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 below. To check on the job status, use the statement. To run an import within a , 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 .

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 or use . 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 followed by . For an example, see .

We also recommend . It is possible to , but it is significantly faster to specify them during import. For large imports, read additional guidance in . Other support considerations include:

IMPORT supports 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 the skip_foreign_keys option to your IMPORT 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 directory must have enough available storage to hold its portion of the data. On , 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:

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 page.

Table users and privileges

Imported tables are treated as new tables, so you must 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 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. For instructions on how to free up disk space as quickly as possible after dropping a table, see
An import job will 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 or it.

For more detail on optimizing import performance, see .

Viewing and controlling import jobs

After CockroachDB initiates an import, you can view its progress with and on the of the DB Console, and you can control it with , , and .

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 , 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 .
The default AUTH=specified parameter. For guidance on using AUTH=implicit authentication with Amazon S3 buckets instead, read .

Also, note the following features for connecting and authenticating to cloud storage:

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 page.
Assume role authentication, which allows you to limit the control specific users have over your storage buckets. See 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 .

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 .

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 .

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 .

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 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 . 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 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 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 or :

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 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

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 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';

​Considerations

​Required privileges

​Table privileges

​Source privileges

​Synopsis

​Parameters

​For import from dump file

​Import options

​Requirements

​Before you begin

​Import targets

​Create table

​Available storage

​Import file location

​Table users and privileges

​Performance

​Viewing and controlling import jobs

​Examples

​Import a PostgreSQL database dump

​Import a table from a PostgreSQL database dump

​Import a MySQL database dump

​Import a table from a MySQL database dump

​Import a limited number of rows

​Import a compressed file

​Run an import within a transaction

​Import a table from a local file

​Import data into your CockroachDB Cloud cluster

​Import using userfile

​Import using cloud storage

​Known limitation

​See also

Considerations

Required privileges

Table privileges

Source privileges

Synopsis

Parameters

For import from dump file

Import options

Requirements

Before you begin

Import targets

Create table

Available storage

Import file location

Table users and privileges

Performance

Viewing and controlling import jobs

Examples

Import a PostgreSQL database dump

Import a table from a PostgreSQL database dump

Import a MySQL database dump

Import a table from a MySQL database dump

Import a limited number of rows

Import a compressed file

Run an import within a transaction

Import a table from a local file

Import data into your CockroachDB Cloud cluster

Import using `userfile`

Import using cloud storage

Known limitation

See also