High praise from the resident MVP.  Thanks, Frank.

I would do as you said... add the extra column with the 2 character country code to the Country table .

The first 6 characters of date format 100 (mon dd yyyy hh:miAM (or PM)) almost have what you need except for the single blank space.  Here's another way to do...

Hector,

I'm on my way out, just now so I need to be brief but I'll be back.

The usual problem with "comma delimited" files is when an extra comma is added...

Hello Hector,

I don't think you want to use ISQL to do this.  BCP will not only determine errors, but any records that don't match the table definition can be automatically...

When you have 0% to start with and the task is large, an 80 or 90% solution would probably be pretty useful as a start.

There's some pretty good posts here that already work, but I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents... this is what I use and it will find "whatever" in all...

If the Recovery Mode is set to Simple, as you say it is, turn on the TRUNCATE LOG ON CHECKPOINT option and delete in smaller chunks.  You may have to...

No, there is not.  You can, however, paste a date from Query Analyzer... or you could set the table up to fill the column with GETDATE() as a default for...

Thanks, Joe...

>If you absolutely after a few weeks of research cannot find an industry standard, then you have to pick a method to create your own. 

Thanks Joe... great explanation about why sequential numbering of records and the use of the IDENTITY property is so bad.  I really appreciate the in-depth explanation (especially the history behind...

>And a proper table does not have IDENTITY either since it can never be a key

How do you generate unique customer numbers for new customers if you don't use IDENTITY?

(Edit)...

Great job all around Frank!  Congrats on the MVP!

I believe ISQLW will launch Query Analyzer.  I think you meant ISQL and it is fairly well deprecated compared to OSQL.  That, not withstanding, if you use OSQL to...