Be very careful with how you interpret the article’s conclusions!

Real world scenario:  I am currently having to take narrative information stored in a SQL Server 2000 db and convert it into a text document.  The narratives are stored with a header record and detail records (one line of narrative per detail record, many detail records per header record).  I have to use the header record to create a report title, then add the narrative.

To accomplish this (in general), I create a title from the header record and store it to a new text file.  I then use a query to collect the detail information and append it to the text file.

I have to generate roughly 3 million text files this way.

Using the sp_OACreate (and related) procedures, I start out generating files at the rate of 5000-6000 per minute, with spikes as high as 8000/minute.  This quickly degrades so that 30 minutes later I’m down to about 1100/minute, and 30 minutes after that I’m down to 600/min.  Eventually I get to the point where I’m only generating about one file per second.

Using OSQL, the results are more consistent but far less dramatic.  I plod along at about 300/minute.  To generate 3 million documents at this rate is going to take a week!

Any suggestions or thoughts?