Bulk Exporting Data from or Bulk Importing Data to a View

You can bulk export data from any view by using a bcp command.

You can bulk import data into a view as follows:

  • Nonpartitioned views

    You can bulk import data into a nonpartitioned view by using a bcp command, a BULK INSERT statement, or an INSERT ... SELECT * FROM OPENROWSET(BULK...) statement.

  • Partitioned views

    Bulk importing into a partitioned view is unsupported. However, you can insert multiple rows into a partitioned view, without bulk optimizations, by using an INSERT Transact-SQL statement.

All bulk-import operations meet the rules for inserting data into a view. For information about those rules, see Modifying Data Through a View.

Important

The treatment of default values by any bulk-import operation depends on which bulk-import command or statement was used. For more information, see Keeping Nulls or Using Default Values During Bulk Import.

Example

The following example uses a view of the HumanResources.DepartmentView table of the AdventureWorks2008R2 sample database. From a query tool such as SQL Server Management Studio Query Editor, execute:

CREATE VIEW DepartmentView AS 
    SELECT DepartmentID, Name, GroupName 
    FROM HumanResources.Department;
GO

The following command bulk exports the data from the DepartmentView view into the DepartmentView.txt data file. At the Microsoft Windows command prompt, enter: 

bcp AdventureWorks2008R2..DepartmentView out DepartmentView.txt -c -T

To delete this sample view, execute the following Transact-SQL statement:

DROP VIEW DepartmentView;
GO

Note

For an example of using a view in a BULK INSERT command, see Using a Format File to Skip a Table Column.