A URL-based web table accesses data from a web server using the HTTP protocol. Web table data is dynamic; the data is not rescannable.

Specify the LOCATION of files on a web server using http://. The web data file(s) must reside on a web server that Greenplum segment hosts can access. The number of URLs specified corresponds to the number of segment instances that work in parallel to access the web table. For example, if you specify two external files to a Greenplum Database system with eight primary segments, two of the eight segments access the web table in parallel at query runtime.

The following sample command defines a web table that gets data from several URLs.

=# CREATE EXTERNAL WEB TABLE ext_expenses (name text, 
  date date, amount float4, category text, description text) 
  LOCATION ( 

  'http://intranet.company.com/expenses/sales/file.csv',
  'http://intranet.company.com/expenses/exec/file.csv',
  'http://intranet.company.com/expenses/finance/file.csv',
  'http://intranet.company.com/expenses/ops/file.csv',
  'http://intranet.company.com/expenses/marketing/file.csv',
  'http://intranet.company.com/expenses/eng/file.csv' 

   )
  FORMAT 'CSV' ( HEADER );