Sqoop import from Oracle for numbers with more than 38 digits

[#1]

Hi everybody,

I'm trying to import into Hive several Oracle tables using Sqoop. These tables have some columns, with NUMBER datatype, that contains numbers with more than 38 digits (e.g. 359348581549148849670250346862698439865). Now:

• If I force the Sqoop datatype, for those columns, as DECIMAL the columns are NULL because the number of digits exceed the maximum precision (38). 
• If I force the Sqoop datatype, for those columns, as STRING or DOUBLE, the numbers will appear in exponential notation (e.g. 3.5934858154914885E38 ).

I can think of a couple of workarounds (e.g. casting those columns as VARCHAR2(40) in the Sqoop source query), but they'll complicate considerably my scripts. Is there a simple way to import such columns in a way that preserves the original appearance?

Thanks!

[#2]

@MrCarlo ,

Have you tried to create a VIEW on top of the table in Oracle and then import the VIEW instead? It is supported in Sqoop as mentioned below:
http://sqoop.apache.org/docs/1.4.6/SqoopUserGuide.html#_selecting_the_data_to_import

Cheers
Eric

[#3]

@EricL , thanks for the reply. I don't have the permissions to create views on the source system. I think, I'm going to try the "CAST" approach.

Thanks!