To copy all rows of a table to a file with no conversion or formatting, omit the column list from the COPY statement. This operation is referred to as an unformatted copy.

For example, to copy the entire employee table into the file, emp_name, issue the following statement:

Parentheses must be included in the statement, even though no columns are listed. The resulting binary file contains data stored in column binary formats. To load data from a file that was created by an unformatted COPY INTO, use an unformatted COPY FROM.