External tables

An external table allows to treat an external flat file as a database table. You can use external tables to access files that are stored on the Netezza Performance Server host server. Additionally, Netezza Performance Server can treat a file on a client system as a remote external table by using the REMOTESOURCE option.

Netezza Performance Server environments also support system tables, which are stored on the host, and user tables, which are stored on the disks in the storage arrays.

You can use external tables to load data into a Netezza system or store data outside a Netezza system. If you use an external table to store data outside a system, you can transfer the data to another application or use the data as a table backup. You can also use data from an external table as part of an SQL query.

An external table has a definition, also called a table schema, but the actual data exists outside the Netezza Performance Server system database. After you create the external table definition, you can use INSERT INTO statements to load data from the external file into a database table or use SELECT FROM statements to query the external table.