IMPORT

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The IMPORT statement imports the following types of data into CockroachDB:

• CSV/TSV
• Postgres dump files
• MySQL dump files
• CockroachDB dump files

Required privileges

Only members of the admin role can run IMPORT. By default, the root user belongs to the admin role.

Synopsis

Import a table from CSV

Import a database or table from dump file

Parameters

For import from CSV

For import from dump file

Import file URLs

URLs for the files you want to import must use the format shown below. For examples, see Example file URLs.

[scheme]://[host]/[path]?[parameters]

• ¹ If the AUTH parameter is implicit, all GCS connections use Google's default authentication strategy. If the AUTH parameter is default, the cloudstorage.gs.default.key cluster setting must be set to the contents of a service account file which will be used during authentication. If the AUTH parameter is not specified, the cloudstorage.gs.default.key setting will be used if it is non-empty, otherwise the implicit behavior is used.

• ² You can create your own HTTP server with Caddy or nginx. A custom root CA can be appended to the system's default CAs by setting the cloudstorage.http.custom_ca cluster setting, which will be used when verifying certificates from HTTPS URLs.

• ³ 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.

• ⁴ A custom root CA can be appended to the system's default CAs by setting the cloudstorage.http.custom_ca cluster setting, which will be used when verifying certificates from an S3-compatible service.

• ⁵ The AWS_REGION parameter is optional since it is not a required parameter for most S3-compatible services. Specify the parameter only if your S3-compatible service requires it.

Example file URLs

Import options

You can control the IMPORT process's behavior using any of the following key-value pairs as a kv_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

Prerequisites

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 the Import file location section below.

Import targets

Imported tables must not exist and must be created in the IMPORT statement. If the table you want to import already exists, you must drop it with DROP TABLE.

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 a CREATE TABLE statement representing the schema of the data you want to import. You have several options:

• Specify the table's columns explicitly from the SQL client. For an example, see Import a table from a CSV file below.

• Load a file that already contains a CREATE TABLE statement. For an example, see Import a Postgres database dump below.

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.

Skip foreign keys

By default, the Postgres and MySQL import formats support foreign keys. Add the skip_foreign_keys option to speed up data import by ignoring foreign key constraints in the dump file's DDL. It will also enable you to import individual tables that would otherwise fail due to dependencies on other tables.

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

We strongly recommend using cloud/remote storage (Amazon S3, Google Cloud Platform, etc.) for the data you want to import.

Local files are supported; however, they must be accessible to all nodes in the cluster using identical Import file URLs.

To import a local file, you have the following options:

• Option 1. Run a local file server to make the file accessible from all nodes.

• Option 2. Make the file accessible from each local node's store:

  1. Create an extern directory on each node's store. The pathname will differ depending on the --store flag passed to cockroach start (if any), but will look something like /path/to/cockroach-data/extern/.
  2. Copy the file to each node's extern directory.
  3. Assuming the file is called data.sql, you can access it in your IMPORT statement using the following import file URL: 'nodelocal:///data.sql'.

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.

Viewing and controlling import jobs

After CockroachDB successfully initiates an import, it registers the import as a job, which you can view with SHOW JOBS.

After the import has been initiated, you can control it with PAUSE JOB, RESUME JOB, and CANCEL JOB.

Examples

Import a table from a CSV file

To manually specify the table schema:

> IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('azure://acme-co/customer-import-data.csv?AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY=hash&AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME=acme-co')
;

To use a file to specify the table schema:

> IMPORT TABLE customers
CREATE USING 'azure://acme-co/customer-create-table.sql?AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY=hash&AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME=acme-co'
CSV DATA ('azure://acme-co/customer-import-data.csv?AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY=hash&AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME=acme-co')
;

Import a table from multiple CSV files

> IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA (
    'azure://acme-co/customer-import-data1.1.csv?AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY=hash&AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME=acme-co',
    'azure://acme-co/customer-import-data1.2.csv?AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY=hash&AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME=acme-co',
    'azure://acme-co/customer-import-data1.3.csv?AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY=hash&AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME=acme-co',
    'azure://acme-co/customer-import-data1.4.csv?AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY=hash&AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME=acme-co',
    'azure://acme-co/customer-import-data1.5.csv?AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY=hash&AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME=acme-co',    
);

Import a table from a TSV file

> IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('azure://acme-co/customer-import-data.tsv?AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY=hash&AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME=acme-co')
WITH
    delimiter = e'\t'
;

Skip commented lines

> IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('azure://acme-co/customer-import-data.csv?AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY=hash&AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME=acme-co')
WITH
    comment = '#'
;

Skip first n lines

> IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('azure://acme-co/customer-import-data.csv?AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY=hash&AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME=acme-co')
WITH
    skip = '2'
;

Use blank characters as NULL

> IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('azure://acme-co/customer-import-data.csv?AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY=hash&AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME=acme-co')
WITH
    nullif = ''
;

Import a compressed CSV 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 customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('azure://acme-co/customer-import-data.csv.gz?AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY=hash&AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME=acme-co')
;

Optionally, you can use the decompress option to specify the codec to be used for decompressing the file during import:

> IMPORT TABLE customers (
        id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
        name TEXT,
        INDEX name_idx (name)
)
CSV DATA ('azure://acme-co/customer-import-data.csv.gz.latest?AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY=hash&AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME=acme-co')
WITH
    decompress = 'gzip'
;

Import a Postgres database dump

> IMPORT PGDUMP 's3://your-external-storage/employees-full.sql?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=123&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=456';

For the command above to succeed, you need to have created the dump file with specific flags to pg_dump. For more information, see Migrate from Postgres.

Import a table from a Postgres database dump

> IMPORT TABLE employees FROM PGDUMP 's3://your-external-storage/employees-full.sql?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=123&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=456' WITH skip_foreign_keys;

If the table schema specifies foreign keys into tables that do not exist yet, the WITH skip_foreign_keys shown may be needed. For more information, see the list of import options.

For the command above to succeed, you need to have created the dump file with specific flags to pg_dump. For more information, see Migrate from Postgres.

Import a CockroachDB dump file

Cockroach dump files can be imported using the IMPORT PGDUMP.

> IMPORT PGDUMP 's3://your-external-storage/employees-full.sql?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=123&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=456';

For more information, see SQL Dump (Export).

Import a MySQL database dump

> IMPORT MYSQLDUMP 's3://your-external-storage/employees-full.sql?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=123&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=456';

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://your-external-storage/employees-full.sql?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=123&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=456' WITH skip_foreign_keys

If the table schema specifies foreign keys into tables that do not exist yet, the WITH skip_foreign_keys shown 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.

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';

See also

• Create a File Server
• Migration Overview
• Migrate from MySQL
• Migrate from Postgres
• Migrate from CSV

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