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Bulk Copy Operations in SQL Server (ADO.NET)

Microsoft SQL Server includes a popular command-line utility named bcp for quickly bulk copying large files into tables or views in SQL Server databases. The SqlBulkCopy class allows you to write managed code solutions that provide similar functionality. There are other ways to load data into a SQL Server table (INSERT statements, for example) but SqlBulkCopy offers a significant performance advantage over them.

The SqlBulkCopy class can be used to write data only to SQL Server tables. But the data source is not limited to SQL Server; any data source can be used, as long as the data can be loaded to a DataTable instance or read with a IDataReader instance.

Using the SqlBulkCopy class, you can perform:

  • A single bulk copy operation

  • Multiple bulk copy operations

  • A bulk copy operation within a transaction

Note

When using .NET Framework version 1.1 or earlier (which does not support the SqlBulkCopy class), you can execute the SQL Server Transact-SQL BULK INSERT statement using the SqlCommand object.

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SQL Server and ADO.NET

ADO.NET Managed Providers and DataSet Developer Center