There are a lot of uses for this technique. Here is an example from Nigel Rivett for doing FTP in a stored procedure

http://www.nigelrivett.net/FTP/s_ftp_GetFile.html

he also...

Christian,

Of course, the use of OLE automation or the command shell presents a particular problem for your database security. The answer is, of course, to meet these security concerns if...

I always prefer to use COM scripting from within TSQL for this sort of job. It is, however, perfectly simple to arrange your database security so that the use of...

No doubt at all, this was very well deserved, Jacob. Your series on XML is by far the clearest and easiest to understand. It puts Books-on-line to shame. You must...

Steve,

I've become a great fan of the 'voice of the DBA'. It is extraordinarily hard to do this sort of thing. I know several people who have tried...

Jacob,

An interesting article as usual. I am curious as to why you aren't using SQLXML4 and SQLXML managed classes to do this. (Is this being covered later in the series?)

On...

Drifting slightly off-topic here, but what about a TSQL routine that uses the xp_cmdShell 'DIR' trick to get an XML list of the files, with their full paths, including...

LOL!

I think I love your DBA as well. Don't get to thinking they're all like that. Try and persuade her to write for SSC or ST!

Process-delegation solves all sorts of...

Jeff,

I seem to be plugging Robyn Page Articles today (I helped with these). This tells you how to do the process with sa, without letting it anywhere normal users, or...

Has comparing the query execution plans for the two statements given you any clues?

Excel files are like any other files in that they have datestamps. You can red these directly into SQL Server so as to be sure to pick up the latest...

I'm not sure I want to spend an hour or so writing your code. However, this is the way I'd go about it.

Import the flat file into a...

Hmm. no real problems here, but quite a bit of hard slog to get everything working nicely.

have a read of....

http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/t-sql-programming/sql-server-excel-workbench/

...which should give you the basics

also my own article

http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/t-sql-programming/reading-and-writing-files-in-sql-server-using-t-sql/

..which should fill...

I'm sure that there is an easy way of doing what you are trying to do, but I haven't a clue as to what it is. Why not explaiin what...

I used all the nice keyboard shortcuts in Query analyser, and then they went and changed them for SSMS.

The father of a friend of mine was a taxidermist, (hobby- ...