Disagreements are good -- better ideas happen that way. One thing I think that Jeff should take more seriously, though, is that some projects may have constraints that disallow certain techniques (xp_cmdshell for one), whether we like it or not. Suppose the data load has to run at customer sites -- no DBA attending, no elevated privileges on customer machines... I have used bcp and bulk insert in a number of situations and do think they are valuable, just may not fit every job.