Apex Data Loader in Linux environment?

Question

According to a requirement, we have to do data loading to Salesforce.com in Linux environment. In Windows, the Apex data loader works fine for data loading. Apex data loader is written in Java so it should work in Linux. How can we run the Apex data loader in Linux or is there any alternative application for data loading for linux?

Answer 1

I was under impression that core of Data Loader is a JAR file so if your server is running Java you could fairly easily discard the GUI of application written for Windows?

1. Please have a look at Data Loader User Guide, especially chapters about running it from command line and in batch mode. In worst case you could even roll out your own program that will use WebServices API exactly like Data Loader does (with reuse of the JAR or written from scratch).
2. Another option would be to use "bulk API", designed for mass inserts. The guide for this is extremely technical and contains tons of useful info (including code of sample Java app).
3. There's "Excel connector" and build of "LexiLoader" for MacOS but I don't think this helps a lot in your case.
4. Last but not least - please consider the Salesforce partners, their AppExchange applications etc. I don't want to do marketing here but on my past project we were pleased with tool from "Relational Junction" (it was working on Unix server, easy to configure, connected with Oracle database, allowed us to pretty much do a proper Extract-Transform-Load proces to and from Salesforce).

Good luck!

Answer 2

www.dataloader.io is the way to go now; it's web-based an unbiased to your OS.

Answer 3

Here are a couple of posts that might help others not using the Apex Data Loader in the standard way:

• http://force201.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/running-the-apex-data-loader-on-a-mac/
• http://force201.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/scripting-the-apex-data-loader-via-ant/

One is about running on the Mac and the other is about running using Ant.

Answer 4

Well, dataloader is a Java app so it is quite biased do any OS that can has a Java runtime. I have been working on an Ubuntu system using Gui.