/BCPWriter

C# library to manipulate Microsoft SQL Server bcp binary format

Primary LanguageC#

C# library to manipulate Microsoft SQL Server bcp binary format

What is bcp (Bulk Copy Program)?

From Microsoft bcp documentation:

The bcp utility bulk copies data between an instance of Microsoft SQL Server and a data file in a user-specified format. The bcp utility can be used to import large numbers of new rows into SQL Server tables or to export data out of tables into data files.

Why use bcp?

Because bcp is the fastest way for inserting data into MS SQL Server.

Example

BCPWriter writer = new BCPWriter();

// FirstName
writer.AddColumn(new SQLNVarChar(SQLNVarChar.MAX));

// LastName
writer.AddColumn(new SQLNVarChar(SQLNVarChar.MAX));

// Birth
writer.AddColumn(new SQLInt());

// Death
writer.AddColumn(new SQLInt());

List<object> rows = new List<object>();
rows.Add("Frederic Francois");
rows.Add("Chopin");
rows.Add(1810);
rows.Add(1849);

rows.Add("Franz");
rows.Add("Liszt");
rows.Add(1811);
rows.Add(1886);

rows.Add("George");
rows.Add("Sand");
rows.Add(1804);
rows.Add(1876);

BinaryWriter stream = new BinaryWriter(new FileStream("data.bcp", FileMode.Create));
writer.WriteRows(stream, rows);
stream.Close();

Implementation

To achieve this I have reverse-engineered bcp binary format, see documentation inside BCPWriter.cs file (use Doxygen to generate it).

The source code is clean, documented, heavily tested and should be stable. A large amount of unit tests come with the source code.