Well, it depends.

The difference isn't that great, and don't forget that the sole purpose of bcp is to get the content from the file into a table with as less...

That is the point Frank is trying to make - you need a primary key and sorting as well.

/Kenneth

BOL (Books On Line) is your #1 stop for that info.

Though formatfiles can be handy, they can also be a pita to get working, so keep the one-line staging table...

As a pure history record, it seems reasonable to record it as clearly and independent as possible. ie if you log the actual names of users, users can be removed...

You can still use bcp - either with a format file that correlates against the fixed format file, or you can bcp it into a one-column staging table, and as...

The idea with semaphore files, is that the sender sends a specially named file after the sender has completed the transfer of the data file. This way, the receiver needs only...

I do this kind of stuff by just scheduling a job in SQL Server - works for me

Just a note on files... You...

Another thought struck me - how are you viewing the files?

I did some very quick and unscientific tests with data that had en EOF in it. BCP always reported all...

Umm, well... spaces are not <zero-length values>, nor are they the same as NULL. They are charachters just like 'abc'. A bunch of spaces may however be treated differently (ie...

If you were the sp, how would you then know if the file has arrived?

Either someone tells you, or you just go yourself and have a look, right?

ANSI/OEM conversions is a major issue for everyone dealing with extended ASCII, and is something you always need to lookout for.

Here's a few links more or less on the subject...

Dunno about any limitations, I don't think there are, this is just the ususal pain us extended ascii users can expect.

This is also...

Does the <zero-length value> contain a CR or LF character?

/Kenneth

Another suggestion - don't map remote drives, use fully qualified UNC paths instead.

ie copy \\REMOTESERVER\remoteShare\myFile.txt c:\localFolder\myFile.txt

/Kenneth

Not sure, really, but you seem to have some conflicting switches..

You're using native mode (/n) and unicode chars (/w) and also says that no conversion should occur (/CRAW)

What happens if...