February 23, 2013 at 10:59 pm
Hi All
I am trying to do a large import with the below code for many thousands of rows from an excel spreadsheet.
the table is made up as follows
col1, col2, col3 col4, col5
sun microsystems inc, test,test,test,test
sun microsystems, inc, test, test, test, test
adobe inc, test,test,test,test
microsoft,test,test,test,test
microsoft",test,test,test,test
"adobe, inc",test,test,,test
I am having problems for example with rows 2, 5 and 6
all rows are inserting but for instance row 2 is finding the comma after sun microsystems, then putting inc in the next column along
same for row 6 with adobe ones
row 5 is still inserting which is similar two the other rows but i think it is doing the same because of the the double quotes
also the last row is showing no value so is there anyway to put some wording into the row if it is empty say something like 'Empty Value'
here is the import I am using
BULK
INSERT The_Big_Kahuna
FROM 'c:\users\alynch\Desktop\The_Big_Kahuna.csv'
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = ',',
ROWTERMINATOR = ''
)
GO
SELECT *
FROM dbo.The_Big_Kahuna
GO
thanks
February 24, 2013 at 3:13 am
You'll need to standardize the input source before even trying the BULK INSERT.
SQL Server is a great tool but it cannot "guess" what the final result should look like from your personal perspective.
You need to provide a field terminator that is not part of the values you're trying to insert.
Maybe you could use a pipe separator or something like this.
February 25, 2013 at 12:54 pm
From your BULK INSERT statement, you're not actually importing from an Excel file, but from a CSV file.
This is an important distinction because it's been my experience that you have a much better shot at getting your input file standardized when using CSV. Excel interprets lots of values such as leading zeros, dates, etc. that make it virtually impossible to get things standardized. If this is going to be a repeated process that runs on a server, Excel can also have VBA code associated with it and you probably don't want to take a chance by running it on your server, especially if it comes from a third party.
I've found that for repeated loads from consistent data files, using BULK INSERT with a format file is very reliable. It's a bit of work to set up the XML format file, but it is ultra-fast and very consistent. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178129.aspx A point to consider is that both the file with the source data and the format file need to be on the server itself.
HTH
Viewing 3 posts - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply