Can SQL*Loader simulatenously extract data from both an Excel file and an Oracle database?

Question

My team is currently building a data analysis tool for our company that requires us to automatically extract data from both an Excel file stored directly on a client's PC, and an Oracle database on our network where we are pulling an entire table of data. Most of the data is contained within the Oracle database. In fact, we are only appending a single new column (or possibly two) to the table using the data found in the Excel document and creating a new database with this.

Preliminary research shows that Excel data can be easily extracted using SQL*Loader by converting the Excel doc into a .csv document and parsing it for the required data.

However, no references I have found have told me how to extract data from an Oracle database using SQL*Loader. Is there a guide out there that can tell me how to do this? Google searches only lead me to guides that tell me how to extract TO a database, which seems like SQL*Loader's obvious functionality. I can't seem to find guides telling me how to extract FROM a database, however.

Also, I have run across some documents which have stated that SQL*Loader can accept multiple input files, but only if they have the same formatting (ie. same type of data file). Does this mean SQL*Loader cannot parse Excel and a database file at the same time? I was worried this might explain why I'm having such trouble finding guides to tell me how to use SQL*Loader on a database.

Answer 1

SQL*Loader is a tool for loading data in a variety of formats to an Oracle database.

I would be looking to use a SQL interface to the database to extract that data, and something other than SQL*Loader to read the csv file if it's only a line or two -- you can use SQL to load that data to the database.