IMPORT

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

• PostgreSQL dump files
• MySQL dump files

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

Considerations

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

Required privileges

Table privileges

The user must have the CREATE privileges on the target database.

Source privileges

New in v22.2: You can grant a user the EXTERNALIOIMPLICITACCESS system-level privilege to interact with external resources that require implicit access.

Either the EXTERNALIOIMPLICITACCESS system-level privilege or the admin role is required for the following scenarios:

• Interacting with a cloud storage resource using IMPLICIT authentication.
• Using a custom endpoint on S3.
• Using the cockroach nodelocal upload command.
• Using HTTP 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 Userfile storage.

We recommend using cloud storage for CockroachDB operations. You also need to ensure that the permissions at your storage destination are configured for the bulk operation. See Storage Permissions for a list of the necessary permissions that each bulk operation requires.

Synopsis

Parameters

For import from dump file

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).

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

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 DROP TABLE or use IMPORT INTO.

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 CREATE TABLE followed by IMPORT INTO. For an example, see Import into a new table from a CSV file.

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. For large imports, read additional guidance in Import into a schema with secondary indexes.

Other support considerations include:

• IMPORT supports computed columns 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 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

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:

• Use Cloud Storage
• Use userfile Storage
• Use a Local File Server

New in v22.2: 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 CREATE EXTERNAL CONNECTION page.

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.
• 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 primary key 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.
• An import job will pause 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 resume or cancel it.

For more detail on optimizing import performance, see Import Performance Best Practices.

Viewing and controlling import jobs

After CockroachDB initiates an import, you can view its progress with SHOW JOBS and on the Jobs page of the DB Console, and you can control it with PAUSE JOB, RESUME JOB, and CANCEL JOB.

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 Use Cloud Storage.
• The default AUTH=specified parameter. For guidance on using AUTH=implicit authentication with Amazon S3 buckets instead, read Use Cloud Storage for Bulk Operations — Authentication.

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

• New in v22.2: 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 CREATE EXTERNAL CONNECTION page.
• New in v22.2: Assume role authentication, which allows you to limit the control specific users have over your storage buckets. See Assume role authentication 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 Migrate from PostgreSQL.

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 Migrate from PostgreSQL.

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 Migrate from MySQL.

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 Migrate from MySQL.

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 dropped 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.

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 cockroach nodelocal upload 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 userfile or cloud storage:

CREATE TABLE customers (
  id INT,
  dob DATE,
  first_name STRING,
  last_name STRING,
  joined DATE
);

IMPORT INTO customers (id, dob, first_name, last_name, joined)
   CSV DATA ('userfile:///test-data.csv');

        job_id       |  status   | fraction_completed |  rows  | index_entries |  bytes
---------------------+-----------+--------------------+--------+---------------+-----------
  599865027685613569 | succeeded |                  1 | 300024 |             0 | 13389972
(1 row)

> 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

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

• Use Cloud Storage
• Migration Overview
• Migrate from MySQL
• Migrate from PostgreSQL
• IMPORT INTO

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