Skip to Main Content
  • Questions
  • Read Data from CSV File Using External Table

Breadcrumb

Question and Answer

Connor McDonald

Thanks for the question, ‪Ahmed.

Asked: March 12, 2026 - 11:35 am UTC

Last updated: March 20, 2026 - 2:03 am UTC

Version: 19c

Viewed 100+ times

You Asked

When I try to read data from a CSV file using an Oracle external table, I get the following error:

ORA-29913: error in executing ODCIEXTTABLEOPEN callout
ORA-29400: data cartridge error

What are the possible causes of this error, and how can I fix it so that the external table can read the CSV file successfully?

and Connor said...

Common causes

- user does not have access the database directory object
- the OS user that the database is running as does not have access to the read the actual file on OS (or the directory in which the file resides)
- file is not present or not correctly named.

We'd need to see the full DDL and the full error stack