Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

Using bcp

As you have seen in this chapter, it is fairly easy to create and implement SSIS packages to do data transformations from one or more data sources to one or more data destinations. However, many organizations still really just need a vanilla and very fast mechanism to export data out of SQL Server or import data into SQL Server. bcp fills this need well (and has done so from the beginning of SQL Server).

The following sections outline the primary execution methods of bcp, the many switches of bcp, the format file, and ways to improve performance when using bcp. By the end of these sections, you will be able to optimally execute bcp successfully for several common production scenarios. Microsoft has added a new execution switch that ...