Mr Otey,

I read your article about using ODBC from ADO.Net. I wonder if the equivalent of ODBC/Bulkcopy librairies exists under .NET. Your article doesn't mention that. We used them recently the get BCP.EXE invocation out of our programming. Theses librairies are quite easy to use. You can find information under under theses sections in books online :
Building SQL Server Applications / ODBC and SQL Server / Programming ODBC SQL Server Applications / Performing Bulk Copy operations
AND
How-to / ODBC / How to bulk copy with the SQL Server ODBC driver (ODBC)

These functions are derived from dblib's way of doing things, but where adapted for ODBC. Among them there are bcp_init that receive an ODBC connection handle, bcp_exec that uses the same handle and is able to load native BCP files. There is also bcp_colfmt that help to specify column type and delimiter when bcp file is not native. There are many other functions that help control natively bulk copy behavior.

Your VC++ project must include odbcbcp.lib and the includes "sqlext.h" and "odbcss.h".

T-SQL Bulk insert is interesting only if you can put your BCP files on SQL Server or if SQL Server can access another server share where thoses files are located.

Maurice7/26/2004 9:26:46 AM