How to use the SQL Server Bulk Copy Program to move lots of data to SQL Server from Visual FoxPro

This article describes how to use the Bulk Copy Program (BCP), a stand-alone utility that ships with Microsoft SQL Server. If you need to move large amounts of data from Microsoft Visual FoxPro to SQL Server, the Upsizing Wizard may be too slow. The Bulk Copy Program utility only transfers the data, it does not create the tables. You can use the Upsizing Wizard to create the tables or create them yourself in ISQL/W. In order to prepare SQL Server to accept the data using the "fast" version of BCP, you must execute the sp_dboption system procedure and set the select into/bulkcopy option to true.

Step-by-step example

Following are sample steps using the BCP utility to transfer data from an ASCII file to SQL Server:

1. Execute from SQL Server:
   sp_dboption Mydatabase,bulkcopy,true
2. Create a tab-delimited ASCII file from the Visual FoxPro Table. For example, use a low-level routine to output your fields into a text file:

         =FPUTS(fhandle, emp_id + CHR(9) + ;
                last_name + CHR(9) + ;
                first_name + CHR(9) + ;
                title + CHR(9) + ;
                PADR(DTOC(birth_date)+' '+'12:00AM',16,' ') + CHR(9) + ;
                PADR(DTOC(hire_date)+' '+ '12:00AM',16,' ') + CHR(9) + ;
                address + CHR(9) + ;
                city + CHR(9) + ;
                region + CHR(9) + ;
                postalcode + CHR(9) + ;
                STR(salary,12,2)  )
   						

3. Create a bcp Format file necessary to transfer data. For example, from the bin directory under SQL Server:
   bcp mydatabase.dbo.employee out c:\temp\emp.txt /Sservename /Usa /Ppassword
   NOTE: This command should be on one line.
4. Follow the prompts, and type \t for the field terminator for each field.
5. When prompted, save the format file with a meaningful name such as employee.fmt.
6. Edit the format file with an MS-DOS editor.
7. Change the second column for each row to SYBCHAR as in the following example using employee.fmt:

         6.0
         11
         1       SYBCHAR       0       6       "\t"       1       emp_id
         2       SYBCHAR       0       20      "\t"       2       last_name
         3       SYBCHAR       0       10      "\t"       3       first_name
         4       SYBCHAR       0       30      "\t"       4       title
         5       SYBCHAR       0       16      "\t"       5       birth_date
         6       SYBCHAR       0       16      "\t"       6       hire_date
         7       SYBCHAR       0       60      "\t"       7       address
         8       SYBCHAR       0       15      "\t"       8       city
         9       SYBCHAR       0       15      "\t"       9       region
         10      SYBCHAR       0       10      "\t"      10       postalcode
         11      SYBCHAR       0       8       "\r\n"    11       salary
   						

8. Change the 5th column for the last row to "\r\n" as the end of file marker.
9. Transfer the ASCII file into SQL Server using BCP as follows:
   bcp mydatabase.dbo.employee in c:\temp\employ.txt /femployee.fmt /Sservernamec /Usa /P""
10. When completed, set the Bulkcopy option back to FALSE using Step 1 with the FALSE parameter.

For additional information, see the SQL Server System Administrator's Guide.