Export with BCP - Problem with varbinary and trailing zeros

  • Hello Community!

    I am having a problem with the export of data via bcp from an Sql Server 2008 instance. The table that I am exporting has the following definition:

    IDEvent (PK, uniqueidentifier)

    MessageType (tinyint)

    MessageVersion (tinyint)

    LogTime (datetime)

    RawData (varbinary(8000))

    The table is used to store production information. In the column "RawData", the binary information of the complete production message is stored. The data could look like the following: "0X08200000018E15430000". In the source database, the RawData is stored in the correct format.

    If I am exporting and then importing the data into a different instance, the information from "RawData" is imported as "0X08200000018E1543". That leads to problems in the further program flow as the missing Bytes are causing exceptions.

    I am calling bcp with the following command for the export: "Bcp exportTabel out D:\tmp\exportTable.dat -n -S ..."

    For the Import: "Bcp exportTable in D:\tmp\exportTable.dat -n -S ..."

    Which options for bcp do I have to add so that my binary data is imported in the correct format?

    Checking the ANSI Padding with the command "SELECT SESSIONPROPERTY('ANSI_PADDING') " gave me the result "1". So the padding should be active on the export and import instance.

    Which options do I have so that the trailing zeros are not lost during the export/import process?

    Thank you for your help.

    Alex

  • Probably not the most elegant of solutions however when we used BCP to export data with leading and trailing zeros we converted depending on which way we were going.

    DECLARE @something AS VARBINARY(MAX)

    DECLARE @somethingelse AS NVARCHAR(MAX) = '0X08200000018E15430000'

    SELECT @something = CONVERT(VARBINARY(MAX), @somethingelse)

    SELECT CONVERT(NVARCHAR(MAX), @something)

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