SQLPlus - spooling to multiple files from PL/SQL blocks

Question

I have a query that returns a lot of data into a CSV file. So much, in fact, that Excel can\'t open it - there are too many rows. Is there a way to control spool

Answer 1

Got a solution, don't know why I didn't think of this sooner...

The basic idea is that the master sqplplus script generates an intermediate script that will split the output to multiple files. Executing the intermediate script will execute multiple queries with different ranges imposed on rownum, and spool to a different file for each query.

set termout off
set serveroutput on
set echo off
set feedback off
variable v_rowCount number;
spool intermediate_file.sql
declare
     i number := 0;
     v_fileNum number := 1;
     v_range_start number := 1;
     v_range_end number := 1;
     k_max_rows constant number := 65536;
begin
    dbms_output.enable(10000);
    select count(*) 
    into :v_err_count
    from ...
    /* You don't need to see the details of the query... */

    while i <= :v_err_count loop

          v_range_start := i+1;
          if v_range_start <= :v_err_count then
            i := i+k_max_rows;
            v_range_end := i;

            dbms_output.put_line('set colsep ,  
set pagesize 0
set trimspool on 
set headsep off
set feedback off
set echo off
set termout off
set linesize 4000
spool large_data_file_'||v_fileNum||'.csv
select data_string
from (select rownum rn, data_object
      from 
      /* Details of query omitted */
     )
where rn >= '||v_range_start||' and rn <= '||v_range_end||';
spool off');
          v_fileNum := v_fileNum +1;
         end if;
    end loop;
end;
/
spool off
prompt     executing intermediate file
@intermediate_file.sql;
set serveroutput off