CHAPTER 2
Flat File Data Sources
For more years than most of us care to remember, the single most common source of external data facing an SQL Server developer or DBA was a text file. The inevitable consequence of the near ubiquity of the “flat” file is the minor ecosystem of tools and techniques that has grown over time to help us all load text file data sources into SQL Server.
Faced with such a plethora of solutions, the main approaches that I examine in this chapter are the following:
- The Import/Export Wizard
- SSIS
- OPENROWSET and OPENDATASOURCE
- BULK INSERT
- Linked servers
- BCP
All have their advantages and drawbacks, as you would expect. The ...
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