Not Everything Is Real-Time
Despite the trend toward real-time APIs, many enterprise integrations still rely on file exchange. Bank transaction files, EDI documents, payroll exports, and legacy system feeds arrive as flat files on SFTP servers. Oracle Integration Cloud handles file-based integrations with built-in SFTP connectivity, file parsing, and orchestration.
OIC File Server
OIC includes a managed SFTP server (File Server) that external systems can push files to and pull files from. Enable it in the OIC console under Settings. Each OIC instance gets a dedicated SFTP endpoint with user accounts and folder structures. This eliminates the need to provision and manage your own SFTP infrastructure.
File-Based Integration Pattern
A typical file integration flow: An external system drops a CSV file on the OIC File Server. A scheduled integration polls the folder, picks up new files, parses the CSV, transforms and validates each record, calls a target system API (database, ERP Cloud, or another app) for each record or batch, moves the processed file to an archive folder, and logs results.
Parsing CSV Files
OIC’s Stage File activity reads and parses CSV, fixed-width, and Excel files. Define the file schema (column names, types, delimiters) in the integration and OIC generates the parsing logic. For CSV with headers, OIC can auto-detect the schema from a sample file:
Add a Stage File activity with Read Entire File operation. Select CSV as the file type and provide a sample. OIC creates a schema with one element per column. Use a For Each loop to process each row, mapping CSV columns to target system fields through the visual mapper.
Error Handling for File Processing
File integrations need row-level error handling. When processing 10,000 rows, you do not want one bad row to fail the entire file. Use a scope with a fault handler around the per-row processing. Log failed rows to an error file or database table with the row number and error details. After processing, generate a summary report showing total rows, successful rows, and failed rows with their errors.
Large File Considerations
OIC has file size limits (typically 10 MB for inline processing). For larger files, use the Stage File activity to read the file in segments, or use a pre-processing step that splits large files into smaller batches before OIC processes them. For very large bulk transfers, consider OCI Data Integration or Oracle Data Pump rather than OIC.