Sql*plus Csv Export Slower Than Sql Developer

I'm trying to export a moderately complex query to a CSV file. I've been doing this manually via SQL Developer during development, but now I'm setting up an automated process so I

Solution 1:

It turns out, after several days of testing different settings, that a better approach was to switch to SQLcl. It supports sql*plus scripts but seems to work MUCH faster; comparable to SQL Developer export speed, or even better (which is the performance I'd hoped for in the first place!). Switching to it, and replacing SET markup csv on; in my scripts with SET SQLFORMAT CSV kept the same result but resulted in a massive speed increase with no further changes. Apparently I was wrong to start with sql*plus and should have just begun with SQLcl.

It's worth noting for others that follow that the many questions, blogs, and forums that discuss sql*plus being faster seem to have been for earlier versions of oracle. As of this writing, in mid 2021, SQLcl seems likely to be the better way to go for speed. Or at the least, it very much was in my case.