Copy data from and to Oracle by using Azure Data Factory or Azure Synapse Analytics

APPLIES TO: Azure Data Factory Azure Synapse Analytics

This article outlines how to use the copy activity in Azure Data Factory to copy data from and to an Oracle database. It builds on the copy activity overview.

Supported capabilities

This Oracle connector is supported for the following capabilities:

Supported capabilities	IR
Copy activity (source/sink)	① ②
Lookup activity	① ②
Script activity	① ②

① Azure integration runtime ② Self-hosted integration runtime

For a list of data stores that are supported as sources or sinks by the copy activity, see the Supported data stores table.

Specifically, this Oracle connector supports:

• The following versions of an Oracle database:
  • Oracle 19c R1 (19.1) and higher
  • Oracle 18c R1 (18.1) and higher
  • Oracle 12c R1 (12.1) and higher
  • Oracle 11g R1 (11.1) and higher
  • Oracle 10g R1 (10.1) and higher
  • Oracle 9i R2 (9.2) and higher
  • Oracle 8i R3 (8.1.7) and higher
  • Oracle Database Cloud Exadata Service
• Parallel copying from an Oracle source. See the Parallel copy from Oracle section for details.

Prerequisites

If your data store is located inside an on-premises network, an Azure virtual network, or Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, you need to configure a self-hosted integration runtime to connect to it.

If your data store is a managed cloud data service, you can use the Azure Integration Runtime. If the access is restricted to IPs that are approved in the firewall rules, you can add Azure Integration Runtime IPs to the allow list.

You can also use the managed virtual network integration runtime feature in Azure Data Factory to access the on-premises network without installing and configuring a self-hosted integration runtime.

For more information about the network security mechanisms and options supported by Data Factory, see Data access strategies.

The integration runtime provides a built-in Oracle driver. Therefore, you don't need to manually install a driver when you copy data from and to Oracle.

Get started

To perform the Copy activity with a pipeline, you can use one of the following tools or SDKs:

• The Copy Data tool
• The Azure portal
• The .NET SDK
• The Python SDK
• Azure PowerShell
• The REST API
• The Azure Resource Manager template

Create a linked service to Oracle using UI

Use the following steps to create a linked service to Oracle in the Azure portal UI.

1. Browse to the Manage tab in your Azure Data Factory or Synapse workspace and select Linked Services, then click New:

   • Azure Data Factory
   • Azure Synapse

   

2. Search for Oracle and select the Oracle connector.

   

3. Configure the service details, test the connection, and create the new linked service.

   

Connector configuration details

The following sections provide details about properties that are used to define entities specific to the Oracle connector.

Linked service properties

The Oracle linked service supports the following properties:

Property	Description	Required
type	The type property must be set to Oracle.	Yes
connectionString	Specifies the information needed to connect to the Oracle Database instance. You can also put a password in Azure Key Vault, and pull the password configuration out of the connection string. Refer to the following samples and Store credentials in Azure Key Vault with more details. Supported connection type: You can use Oracle SID or Oracle Service Name to identify your database: - If you use SID: Host=<host>;Port=<port>;Sid=<sid>;User Id=<username>;Password=<password>; - If you use Service Name: Host=<host>;Port=<port>;ServiceName=<servicename>;User Id=<username>;Password=<password>; For advanced Oracle native connection options, you can choose to add an entry in TNSNAMES.ORA file on the machine where the self-hosted integration runtime is installed, and in Oracle linked service, choose to use Oracle Service Name connection type and configure the corresponding service name.	Yes
connectVia	The integration runtime to be used to connect to the data store. Learn more from Prerequisites section. If not specified, the default Azure Integration Runtime is used.	No

If you have multiple Oracle instances for failover scenario, you can create Oracle linked service and fill in the primary host, port, user name, password, etc., and add a new "Additional connection properties" with property name as AlternateServers and value as (HostName=<secondary host>:PortNumber=<secondary port>:ServiceName=<secondary service name>) - do not miss the brackets and pay attention to the colons (:) as separator. As an example, the following value of alternate servers defines two alternate database servers for connection failover: (HostName=AccountingOracleServer:PortNumber=1521:SID=Accounting,HostName=255.201.11.24:PortNumber=1522:ServiceName=ABackup.NA.MyCompany).

More connection properties you can set in connection string per your case:

Property	Description	Allowed values
ArraySize	The number of bytes the connector can fetch in a single network round trip. E.g., ArraySize=‭10485760‬. Larger values increase throughput by reducing the number of times to fetch data across the network. Smaller values increase response time, as there is less of a delay waiting for the server to transmit data.	An integer from 1 to 4294967296 (4 GB). Default value is 60000. The value 1 does not define the number of bytes, but indicates allocating space for exactly one row of data.

To enable encryption on Oracle connection, you have two options:

• To use Triple-DES Encryption (3DES) and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), on the Oracle server side, go to Oracle Advanced Security (OAS) and configure the encryption settings. For details, see this Oracle documentation. The Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) connector automatically negotiates the encryption method to use the one you configure in OAS when establishing a connection to Oracle.

• To use TLS, set up truststore for SSL server authentication by applying one of the following three methods:

  • Method 1 (recommended):

    1. Install the TLS/SSL certificate by importing it into the local certificate store. The built-in Oracle driver is able to load the needed certificate from the certificate store.

    2. In the service, configure the Oracle connection string with EncryptionMethod=1.

  • Method 2:

    1. Get the TLS/SSL certificate information. Get the Distinguished Encoding Rules (DER)-encoded or Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM)-encoded certificate information of your TLS/SSL cert.

       openssl x509 -inform (DER|PEM) -in [Full Path to the DER/PEM Certificate including the name of the DER/PEM Certificate] -text
       

    2. In the service, configure the Oracle connection string with EncryptionMethod=1 and the corresponding TrustStore value. For example, Host=<host>;Port=<port>;Sid=<sid>;User Id=<username>;Password=<password>;EncryptionMethod=1;TrustStore= data:// -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----<certificate content>-----END CERTIFICATE-----

       Note

       • The value of the TrustStore field should be prefixed with data://.
       • When specifying content for multiple certificates, specify the content of each certificate between -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- and -----END CERTIFICATE-----. The number of dashes (-----) should be the same before and after both BEGIN CERTIFICATE and END CERTIFICATE. For example:
         -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----<certificate content 1>-----END CERTIFICATE-----
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----<certificate content 2>-----END CERTIFICATE-----
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----<certificate content 3>-----END CERTIFICATE-----
       • The TrustStore field supports content up to 8192 characters in length.

  • Method 3:

    1. Create the truststore file with strong ciphers like AES256.

       openssl pkcs12 -in [Full Path to the DER/PEM Certificate including the name of the DER/PEM Certificate] -out [Path and name of TrustStore] -passout pass:[Keystore PWD] -keypbe AES-256-CBC -certpbe AES-256-CBC -nokeys -export
       

    2. Place the truststore file on the self-hosted integration runtime machine. For example, place the file at C:\MyTrustStoreFile.

    3. In the service, configure the Oracle connection string with EncryptionMethod=1 and the corresponding TrustStore/TrustStorePassword value. For example, Host=<host>;Port=<port>;Sid=<sid>;User Id=<username>;Password=<password>;EncryptionMethod=1;TrustStore=C:\\MyTrustStoreFile;TrustStorePassword=<trust_store_password>.

Example:

{
    "name": "OracleLinkedService",
    "properties": {
        "type": "Oracle",
        "typeProperties": {
            "connectionString": "Host=<host>;Port=<port>;Sid=<sid>;User Id=<username>;Password=<password>;"
        },
        "connectVia": {
            "referenceName": "<name of Integration Runtime>",
            "type": "IntegrationRuntimeReference"
        }
    }
}

Example: store password in Azure Key Vault

{
    "name": "OracleLinkedService",
    "properties": {
        "type": "Oracle",
        "typeProperties": {
            "connectionString": "Host=<host>;Port=<port>;Sid=<sid>;User Id=<username>;",
            "password": { 
                "type": "AzureKeyVaultSecret", 
                "store": { 
                    "referenceName": "<Azure Key Vault linked service name>", 
                    "type": "LinkedServiceReference" 
                }, 
                "secretName": "<secretName>" 
            }
        },
        "connectVia": {
            "referenceName": "<name of Integration Runtime>",
            "type": "IntegrationRuntimeReference"
        }
    }
}

Dataset properties

This section provides a list of properties supported by the Oracle dataset. For a full list of sections and properties available for defining datasets, see Datasets.

To copy data from and to Oracle, set the type property of the dataset to OracleTable. The following properties are supported.

Property	Description	Required
type	The type property of the dataset must be set to OracleTable.	Yes
schema	Name of the schema.	No for source, Yes for sink
table	Name of the table/view.	No for source, Yes for sink
tableName	Name of the table/view with schema. This property is supported for backward compatibility. For new workload, use schema and table.	No for source, Yes for sink

Example:

{
    "name": "OracleDataset",
    "properties":
    {
        "type": "OracleTable",
        "schema": [],
        "typeProperties": {
            "schema": "<schema_name>",
            "table": "<table_name>"
        },
        "linkedServiceName": {
            "referenceName": "<Oracle linked service name>",
            "type": "LinkedServiceReference"
        }
    }
}

Copy activity properties

This section provides a list of properties supported by the Oracle source and sink. For a full list of sections and properties available for defining activities, see Pipelines.

Oracle as source

To copy data from Oracle, set the source type in the copy activity to OracleSource. The following properties are supported in the copy activity source section.

Property	Description	Required
type	The type property of the copy activity source must be set to OracleSource.	Yes
oracleReaderQuery	Use the custom SQL query to read data. An example is "SELECT * FROM MyTable". When you enable partitioned load, you need to hook any corresponding built-in partition parameters in your query. For examples, see the Parallel copy from Oracle section.	No
convertDecimalToInteger	Oracle NUMBER type with zero or unspecified scale will be converted to corresponding integer. Allowed values are true and false (default).	No
partitionOptions	Specifies the data partitioning options used to load data from Oracle. Allowed values are: None (default), PhysicalPartitionsOfTable, and DynamicRange. When a partition option is enabled (that is, not None), the degree of parallelism to concurrently load data from an Oracle database is controlled by the parallelCopies setting on the copy activity.	No
partitionSettings	Specify the group of the settings for data partitioning. Apply when the partition option isn't None.	No
partitionNames	The list of physical partitions that needs to be copied. Apply when the partition option is PhysicalPartitionsOfTable. If you use a query to retrieve the source data, hook ?AdfTabularPartitionName in the WHERE clause. For an example, see the Parallel copy from Oracle section.	No
partitionColumnName	Specify the name of the source column in integer type that will be used by range partitioning for parallel copy. If not specified, the primary key of the table is auto-detected and used as the partition column. Apply when the partition option is DynamicRange. If you use a query to retrieve the source data, hook ?AdfRangePartitionColumnName in the WHERE clause. For an example, see the Parallel copy from Oracle section.	No
partitionUpperBound	The maximum value of the partition column to copy data out. Apply when the partition option is DynamicRange. If you use a query to retrieve the source data, hook ?AdfRangePartitionUpbound in the WHERE clause. For an example, see the Parallel copy from Oracle section.	No
partitionLowerBound	The minimum value of the partition column to copy data out. Apply when the partition option is DynamicRange. If you use a query to retrieve the source data, hook ?AdfRangePartitionLowbound in the WHERE clause. For an example, see the Parallel copy from Oracle section.	No

Example: copy data by using a basic query without partition

"activities":[
    {
        "name": "CopyFromOracle",
        "type": "Copy",
        "inputs": [
            {
                "referenceName": "<Oracle input dataset name>",
                "type": "DatasetReference"
            }
        ],
        "outputs": [
            {
                "referenceName": "<output dataset name>",
                "type": "DatasetReference"
            }
        ],
        "typeProperties": {
            "source": {
                "type": "OracleSource",
                "convertDecimalToInteger": false,
                "oracleReaderQuery": "SELECT * FROM MyTable"
            },
            "sink": {
                "type": "<sink type>"
            }
        }
    }
]

Oracle as sink

To copy data to Oracle, set the sink type in the copy activity to OracleSink. The following properties are supported in the copy activity sink section.

Property	Description	Required
type	The type property of the copy activity sink must be set to OracleSink.	Yes
writeBatchSize	Inserts data into the SQL table when the buffer size reaches writeBatchSize. Allowed values are Integer (number of rows).	No (default is 10,000)
writeBatchTimeout	The wait time for the batch insert operation to complete before it times out. Allowed values are Timespan. An example is 00:30:00 (30 minutes).	No
preCopyScript	Specify a SQL query for the copy activity to run before writing data into Oracle in each run. You can use this property to clean up the preloaded data.	No
maxConcurrentConnections	The upper limit of concurrent connections established to the data store during the activity run. Specify a value only when you want to limit concurrent connections.	No

Example:

"activities":[
    {
        "name": "CopyToOracle",
        "type": "Copy",
        "inputs": [
            {
                "referenceName": "<input dataset name>",
                "type": "DatasetReference"
            }
        ],
        "outputs": [
            {
                "referenceName": "<Oracle output dataset name>",
                "type": "DatasetReference"
            }
        ],
        "typeProperties": {
            "source": {
                "type": "<source type>"
            },
            "sink": {
                "type": "OracleSink"
            }
        }
    }
]

Parallel copy from Oracle

The Oracle connector provides built-in data partitioning to copy data from Oracle in parallel. You can find data partitioning options on the Source tab of the copy activity.

When you enable partitioned copy, the service runs parallel queries against your Oracle source to load data by partitions. The parallel degree is controlled by the parallelCopies setting on the copy activity. For example, if you set parallelCopies to four, the service concurrently generates and runs four queries based on your specified partition option and settings, and each query retrieves a portion of data from your Oracle database.

You are suggested to enable parallel copy with data partitioning especially when you load large amount of data from your Oracle database. The following are suggested configurations for different scenarios. When copying data into file-based data store, it's recommanded to write to a folder as multiple files (only specify folder name), in which case the performance is better than writing to a single file.

Scenario	Suggested settings
Full load from large table, with physical partitions.	Partition option: Physical partitions of table. During execution, the service automatically detects the physical partitions, and copies data by partitions.
Full load from large table, without physical partitions, while with an integer column for data partitioning.	Partition options: Dynamic range partition. Partition column: Specify the column used to partition data. If not specified, the primary key column is used.
Load a large amount of data by using a custom query, with physical partitions.	Partition option: Physical partitions of table. Query: SELECT * FROM <TABLENAME> PARTITION("?AdfTabularPartitionName") WHERE <your_additional_where_clause>. Partition name: Specify the partition name(s) to copy data from. If not specified, the service automatically detects the physical partitions on the table you specified in the Oracle dataset. During execution, the service replaces ?AdfTabularPartitionName with the actual partition name, and sends to Oracle.
Load a large amount of data by using a custom query, without physical partitions, while with an integer column for data partitioning.	Partition options: Dynamic range partition. Query: SELECT * FROM <TABLENAME> WHERE ?AdfRangePartitionColumnName <= ?AdfRangePartitionUpbound AND ?AdfRangePartitionColumnName >= ?AdfRangePartitionLowbound AND <your_additional_where_clause>. Partition column: Specify the column used to partition data. You can partition against the column with integer data type. Partition upper bound and partition lower bound: Specify if you want to filter against partition column to retrieve data only between the lower and upper range. During execution, the service replaces ?AdfRangePartitionColumnName, ?AdfRangePartitionUpbound, and ?AdfRangePartitionLowbound with the actual column name and value ranges for each partition, and sends to Oracle. For example, if your partition column "ID" is set with the lower bound as 1 and the upper bound as 80, with parallel copy set as 4, the service retrieves data by 4 partitions. Their IDs are between [1,20], [21, 40], [41, 60], and [61, 80], respectively.

Example: query with physical partition

"source": {
    "type": "OracleSource",
    "query": "SELECT * FROM <TABLENAME> PARTITION(\"?AdfTabularPartitionName\") WHERE <your_additional_where_clause>",
    "partitionOption": "PhysicalPartitionsOfTable",
    "partitionSettings": {
        "partitionNames": [
            "<partitionA_name>",
            "<partitionB_name>"
        ]
    }
}

Example: query with dynamic range partition

"source": {
    "type": "OracleSource",
    "query": "SELECT * FROM <TABLENAME> WHERE ?AdfRangePartitionColumnName <= ?AdfRangePartitionUpbound AND ?AdfRangePartitionColumnName >= ?AdfRangePartitionLowbound AND <your_additional_where_clause>",
    "partitionOption": "DynamicRange",
    "partitionSettings": {
        "partitionColumnName": "<partition_column_name>",
        "partitionUpperBound": "<upper_value_of_partition_column>",
        "partitionLowerBound": "<lower_value_of_partition_column>"
    }
}

Data type mapping for Oracle

When you copy data from and to Oracle, the following interim data type mappings are used within the service. To learn about how the copy activity maps the source schema and data type to the sink, see Schema and data type mappings.

Oracle data type	Interim data type
BFILE	Byte[]
BLOB	Byte[] (only supported on Oracle 10g and higher)
CHAR	String
CLOB	String
DATE	DateTime
FLOAT	Decimal, String (if precision > 28)
INTEGER	Decimal, String (if precision > 28)
LONG	String
LONG RAW	Byte[]
NCHAR	String
NCLOB	String
NUMBER (p,s)	Decimal, String (if p > 28)
NUMBER without precision and scale	Double
NVARCHAR2	String
RAW	Byte[]
ROWID	String
TIMESTAMP	DateTime
TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIME ZONE	String
TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE	String
UNSIGNED INTEGER	Number
VARCHAR2	String
XML	String

Lookup activity properties

To learn details about the properties, check Lookup activity.

Related content

For a list of data stores supported as sources and sinks by the copy activity, see Supported data stores.