**Why Incremental**: Full table scans on 100M+ row RDBMS tables cause locks, replication lag, and hour-long loads. Incremental captures only delta—minutes instead of hours.
**Modes**: (1) **append**—check column (e.g., id) for new rows; append-only tables. (2) **lastmodified**—timestamp column; captures updates and inserts; use `--merge-key` to upsert.
**Architectural Logic**: Store `--last-value` in a control table or file; next run reads it....
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