Load from external table issues

Dear All, I am doing unload/load to external tables in order to speed up the process of dbexport/dbimport for huge tables. However, I get an error 26168: Conversion err:(file,offset,reason,col)=(xxxx)so my assumption is that we have some data in the char fields in the tables that is recognized as delimiter Source and destination systems are the same, Informix 11.7FC 4 on AIX 7.1, same environment, same pretty much everything. We have tried few options for the delimiter sign (including format "informix" ) but no luck. Any idea how to bypass this behavior. Actually there is some special data in the char columns such as \\ \\\\t that are causing troubles. Here are the export import commands used: UNLOAD set pdqpriority 80; drop table if exists glb_stavka_in_ext; create external table glb_stavka_in_ext sameas glb_stavka_in using ( datafiles ( 'DISK:/export_dir/migracija_test/unload_na_tabeli/test/glb_stavka_in.unl3'),DELI MITER '|'); insert into glb_stavka_in_ext select * from glb_stavka_in where data_valuta < '05-01-2014'; LOAD: set pdqpriority 80; drop table if exists glb_stavka_in_ext; create external table glb_stavka_in_ext sameas glb_stavka_in using ( datafiles ('DISK:/export_dir/migracija_test/unload_na_tabeli/test/glb_stavka_in.unl3'),DEL IMITER '|', express); insert into glb_stavka_in select * from glb_stavka_in_ext; We are following the document https://advancedatatools.com/Downloads/AdvancedDataTools-Webcast-DB_Migrations_2 _MikeWalker.pdf where the syntax is as follows: set pdqpriority 25;create external table bigtab_ext sameas bigtab using (datafiles ("DISK:/migrate/bigtab.unl1", "DISK:/migrate/bigtab.unl2"), format "informix"); insert into bigtab_ext select * from bigtab; set pdqpriority 25; drop table if exists bigtab_ext;create external table bigtab_ext sameas bigtab_load using (datafiles ("DISK:/migrate/bigtab.unl1", "DISK:/migrate/bigtab.unl2"), format "informix"); alter table bigtab_loadtype (raw); insert into bigtab_load select * from bigtab_ext; Any idea is highly appreciated Thank you, Aleksandar

The external table files should have all the DELIMITER and RECORDEND characters properly escaped. Are you copying the files between servers? Is the database encoding the same for the origin and destination? What are the DB_LOCALE and CLIENT_LOCALE environment variables set to ? Best regards, Luis Marques

Hi Luis Yes we are copying the files between servers, DB_LOCALE is set to en_US.819, CLIENT_LOCALE we don't have set this. After having problem with external tables by moving files from production to new server (the server we are using at the moment for testing unload/load to external tables) we done dbexport on database (on production server) and make dbimport on test server and we try all of unlaods/loads to/from external tables on test server and here we have same problem like we have with moving data from production server. We have try with different DELIMITER but always have same error.