EXPORT

Cockroach Labs recommends using because they provide better performance for growing workloads. Additionally, changefeeds operate as jobs, which offer , , and .

The EXPORT exports tabular data or the results of arbitrary SELECT statements to the following:

• CSV files
• Parquet files

Using the , EXPORT parallelizes file creation across all nodes in the cluster, making it possible to quickly get large sets of data out of CockroachDB in a format that can be ingested by downstream systems.

If you do not need distributed exports, you can export tabular data in CSV format.

Cancelling export

After the export has been initiated, you can cancel it with .

For detail on handling partially complete exports at the destination, refer to Export File URL.

Synopsis

The EXPORT statement cannot be used within a .

Required privileges

The user must have the SELECT on the table being exported, unless the .

Destination privileges

You can grant a user the EXTERNALIOIMPLICITACCESS to interact with external resources that require implicit access.

Either the EXTERNALIOIMPLICITACCESS or the role is required for the following scenarios:

• Interacting with a cloud storage resource using .
• Using a custom endpoint on S3.
• Using the command.
• Using 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 storage.

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

While Cockroach Labs actively tests Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Azure Storage, we do not test S3-compatible services (e.g., MinIO, Red Hat Ceph).

Parameters

Parameter	Description
file_location	Specify the URL of the file location where you want to store the exported data. Note: It is best practice to use a unique destination for each export, to avoid mixing files from different exports in one directory.
opt_with_options	Control your export’s behavior with these options.
select_stmt	Specify the query whose result you want to export.
table_name	Specify the name of the table you want to export.

Export file URL

You can specify the base directory where you want to store the exported files. CockroachDB will create the export file(s) in the specified directory with programmatically generated names (e.g., exportabc123-n1.1.csv, exportabc123-n1.2.csv, exportabc123-n2.1.csv, …). Each export should use a unique destination directory to avoid collision with other exports.

The EXPORT command returns the list of files to which the data was exported. You may wish to record these for use in subsequent imports.

If an export encounters some kind of failure or cancellation, it will leave any written files behind in the destination. To run a new export and avoid collision with previously written export files, consider doing the following:

• Change the destination (or destination prefix) that you are exporting to.
• Remove the partial results at the destination from any previously attempted exports.
• Use a instead because it operates as a job, offering more observability into failures.

A hexadecimal hash code (abc123... in the file names) uniquely identifies each export run; files sharing the same hash are part of the same export. If you see multiple hash codes within a single destination directory, then the directory contains multiple exports, which will likely cause confusion (duplication) on import. We recommend that you manually clean up the directory, to ensure that it contains only a single export run.

For more information, see the following:

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 page.

Export options

You can control the process’s behavior using any of the following key-value pairs as a kv_option.

Key	Context	Value
delimiter	CSV DATA	The ASCII character that delimits columns in your rows. If not using comma as your column delimiter, you can specify another ASCII character as the delimiter. Default: ,. <br /> To use tab-delimited values: WITH delimiter = e'\t' <br /> See the example.
nullas	CSV DATA, DELIMITED DATA	The string that should be used to represent NULL values. To avoid collisions, it is important to pick nullas values that do not appear in the exported data. <br /> To use empty columns as NULL: WITH nullas = '' <br /> See the example.
compression	CSV DATA, PARQUET DATA	This instructs export to write compressed files to the specified destination. For CSV DATA, gzip compression is supported. For PARQUET DATA, both gzip and snappy compression is supported. <br /> See the example.
chunk_rows	CSV DATA, PARQUET DATA	The number of rows to be converted and written to a single file. Default: 100000. <br />For example, WITH chunk_rows = '5000' for a table with 10,000 rows would produce two files. <br /> Note:EXPORT will stop and upload the file whether the configured limit for chunk_rows or chunk_size is reached first.
chunk_size	CSV DATA, PARQUET DATA	A target size per file that you can specify during an EXPORT. Once the target size is reached, the file is uploaded before processing further rows. Default: 32MB. <br />For example, to set the size of each file uploaded during the export to 10MB: WITH chunk_size = '10MB'. <br /> Note:EXPORT will stop and upload the file whether the configured limit for chunk_rows or chunk_size is reached first.

Success responses

Successful EXPORT returns a table of (perhaps multiple) files to which the data was exported:

Response	Description
filename	The file to which the data was exported.
rows	The number of rows exported to this file.
bytes	The file size in bytes.

Parquet types

CockroachDB types map to Parquet types listed in the following table. All columns witten to Parquet files will be nullable, therefore the Parquet repetition level is optional.

CockroachDB Type	Parquet Type	Parquet Logical Type
	BOOLEAN	nil
	byte array	STRING
	byte array	STRING
	byte array	STRING
	byte array	JSON
	INT64	nil
	INT32	nil
	FLOAT64	nil
	FLOAT32	nil
	byte array	DECIMAL <br />Note: scale and precision data are preserved in the Parquet file.
	fixed_len_byte_array	nil
	byte array	nil
	byte array	nil
	byte array	ENUM
	byte array	STRING
	byte array	nil
	byte array	nil
	byte array	STRING
	INT64	TIME <br />Note: microseconds after midnight; <br />exporting to microsecond precision.
	byte array	STRING <br />Note: exporting to microsecond precision.
	byte array	STRING <br />Note: specifically represented as ISO8601.
	byte array	STRING <br />Note: exporting to microsecond precision.
	byte array	STRING <br />Note: exporting to microsecond precision.
	Encoded as a repeated field; <br />each array value is encoded as per the preceding types.	nil

Exports and AS OF SYSTEM TIME

The clause is not required in EXPORT statements, even though they are long-running queries. If it is omitted, AS OF SYSTEM TIME is implicitly set to the start of the statement’s execution. The risk of is low because other transactions would need to have exactly the same transaction start time as the EXPORT statement’s start time.

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 .
• The default AUTH=specified parameter. For guidance on using AUTH=implicit authentication with Amazon S3 buckets instead, read .

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

• 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 page.
• Assume role authentication, which allows you to limit the control specific users have over your storage buckets. See for more information.

Each of these examples use the bank database and the customers table; customer-export-data is the demonstration path to which we’re exporting our customers’ data in this example.

Export a table into CSV

This example uses the delimiter option to define the ASCII character that delimits columns in your rows:

> EXPORT INTO CSV
  's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customer-export-data}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
  WITH delimiter = '|' FROM TABLE bank.customers;

This examples uses the nullas option to define the string that represents NULL values:

> EXPORT INTO CSV
  's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customer-export-data}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
  WITH nullas = '' FROM TABLE bank.customers;

Export a table into Parquet

> EXPORT INTO PARQUET
  's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customer-export-data}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
  FROM TABLE bank.customers;

Export using a SELECT statement

> EXPORT INTO CSV
  's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customer-export-data}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
  FROM SELECT * FROM bank.customers WHERE id >= 100;

For more information, see .

Non-distributed export using the SQL client

$ cockroach sql -e "SELECT * from bank.customers WHERE id>=100;" --format=csv > my.csv

For more information about the SQL client, see .

Export compressed files

gzip compression is supported for both PARQUET and CSV file formats:

> EXPORT INTO CSV
  's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customer-export-data}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
  WITH compression = 'gzip' FROM TABLE bank.customers;

filename                                           | rows | bytes
---------------------------------------------------+------+--------
export16808a04292505c80000000000000001-n1.0.csv.gz |   17 |   824
(1 row)

PARQUET data also supports snappy compression:

> EXPORT INTO PARQUET
  's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customer-export-data}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
  WITH compression = 'snappy' FROM TABLE bank.customers;

filename                                                   | rows | bytes
-----------------------------------------------------------+------+--------
export16808a04292505c80000000000000001-n1.0.parquet.snappy |   17 |   824
(1 row)

Export tabular data with an S3 storage class

To associate your export objects with a in your Amazon S3 bucket, use the S3_STORAGE_CLASS parameter with the class. For example, the following S3 connection URI specifies the INTELLIGENT_TIERING storage class:

> EXPORT INTO CSV
  's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customer-export-data}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}&S3_STORAGE_CLASS=INTELLIGENT_TIERING'
  WITH delimiter = '|' FROM TABLE bank.customers;

Use the parameter to set one of these storage classes listed in Amazon’s documentation. For more general usage information, see Amazon’s Using Amazon S3 storage classes documentation.

Export data out of CockroachDB Cloud

Using EXPORT with is not recommended. You can either export data to or to a local CSV file by using :

local CSV

The following example exports the customers table from the bank database into a local CSV file:

$ cockroach sql \
--url 'postgres://{username}:{password}@{host}:26257?sslmode=verify-full&sslrootcert={path/to/certs_dir}/cc-ca.crt' \
--execute "SELECT * FROM bank.customers" --format=csv > /Users/{username}/{path/to/file}/customers.csv

Cloud storage

The following example exports the customers table from the bank database into a cloud storage bucket in CSV format:

EXPORT INTO CSV
  's3://{BUCKET NAME}/{customer-export-data}?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={ACCESS KEY}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={SECRET ACCESS KEY}'
  WITH delimiter = '|' FROM TABLE bank.customers;

View a running export

View running exports by using :

> SHOW STATEMENTS;

Cancel a running export

Use to get a running export’s query_id, which can be used to :

> CANCEL QUERY '14dacc1f9a781e3d0000000000000001';

For detail on handling partially complete exports at the destination, refer to Export File URL.

Known limitation

EXPORT may fail with an error if the SQL statements are incompatible with DistSQL. In that case, export tabular data in CSV format.

See also