Tutorials
Practical T-SQL
Practical T-SQL
  • Practical T-SQL Pocket Guide For Beginners
  • Preface
    • Section I. A Note From The Author
    • Section II. Tutorial Overview
    • Section III. Running The Examples
    • Section IV. How To Report An Issue
    • Section V. Join The MSU Community On Discord
    • Section VI. Supplementary Material
  • Language Basics
    • Lesson 1. Obligatory Hello World
    • Lesson 2. Code Comments With T-SQL
    • Lesson 3. Basic Syntax
    • Lesson 4. Your First Query
    • Lesson 5. Filtering Data
    • Lesson 6. Sorting Data
    • Lesson 7. Complex Data Filtering
    • Lesson 8. Aliases
    • Lesson 9. String Functions
    • Lesson 10. Creating New Columns From Existing Data (Calculated Fields)
    • Lesson 11. Displaying Data Based On Conditions (Case Statement)
    • Lesson 12. Aggregate Functions
    • Lesson 13. Grouping And Summarizing Data
    • Lesson 14. Querying More Than One Table
    • Lesson 15. Combining Queries
    • Lesson 16. Subqueries
    • Lesson 17. Creating Data
    • Lesson 18. Updating Data
    • Lesson 19. Deleting Data
    • Lesson 20. Common Table Expressions (CTEs)
    • Lesson 21. Derived Tables
    • Lesson 22. Putting It All Together
  • Advanced Topics
    • Lesson 23. Selecting Unique Values
    • Lesson 24. Updating Data With A Join
    • Lesson 25. Data Types
    • Lesson 26. Casting Data Types
    • Lesson 27. Creating Tables
    • Lesson 28. Altering Tables
    • Lesson 29. Dropping Tables
    • Lesson 30. Variables
    • Lesson 31. Controlling Flow
    • Lesson 32. Looping
    • Lesson 33. Error Processing
    • Lesson 34. Temporary Tables
    • Lesson 35. Views
    • Lesson 36. Indexed Views
    • Lesson 37. User Defined Functions
    • Lesson 38. Stored Procedures
    • Lesson 39. BULK INSERT
    • Lesson 40. Loading Tables With MERGE
    • Lesson 41. Partitioning A Dataset
    • Lesson 42. Pivoting Data
    • Lesson 43. Dynamic SQL
    • Lesson 44. Cursors
  • Solutions To Real World Problems
    • Lesson 45. Listing All Tables In A SQL Server Database
    • Lesson 46. Listing All Columns In A SQL Server Database
    • Lesson 47. Pull Records From A Table At Random
    • Lesson 48. A Better Alternative To WITH (NOLOCK)
    • Lesson 49. Boost Performance When Calling A Stored Proc From SSIS
    • Lesson 50. Setting Up Queries For Ablation Testing
    • Lesson 51. Reduce Code And Save Time With Default Column Values
    • Lesson 52. Finding Duplicate Records In A Table
    • Lesson 53. Why You Cannot Have More Than One Clustered Index On A Table
    • Lesson 54. Converting Dates To YYYYMMDD
    • Lesson 55. Sending Notification Emails With T-SQL Without Using Hardcoded Email Addresses
    • Lesson 56. Troubleshooting Long Running Queries
    • Lesson 57. Loading Large CSVs Into Data Warehouse Staging Tables
    • Lesson 58. The Only Bloody Good Reason To Use Cursors
    • Lesson 59. Loading A Type II Slowly Changing Dimension With SQL Merge
    • Lesson 60. A Clearer Explanation Of The Parameters Of The Numeric Data Type
    • Lesson 61. Why You Cannot Join On Null Values
    • Lesson 62. A Deep Dive On How The Where Clause Functions
    • Lesson 63. Using HASHBYTES() To Compare Character Strings
    • Lesson 64. Using Pipe To Hash Multiple Columns For Matching
    • Lesson 65. Why People That Indent Code Drive Me Nuts
    • Lesson 66. How To Rapidly Stand Up A Data Warehouse From Scratch
    • Lesson 67. How To Pivot Data With T-SQL When Columns Are Not Predefined
    • Lesson 68. Prepopulating A Junk Dimension
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  • BULK INSERT Syntax
  • Examples
  1. Advanced Topics

Lesson 39. BULK INSERT

PreviousLesson 38. Stored ProceduresNextLesson 40. Loading Tables With MERGE

Last updated 3 years ago

There are numerous ways to get data into SQL Server. One of the fastest and least clunky-to-set-up ways is by using the BULK INSERT statement to ingest large CSVs.

When you use BULK INSERT, the table that you are importing data into has to match the schema of the file you are importing. I teach you how to work around this limitation in the lesson titled .

BULK INSERT Syntax

In [ ]:

BULK INSERT YourSchema.YourTable
FROM 'FullyQualifiedFilePath\YourFile.csv'

Examples

Basic Bulk Insert Example

In this example, we will use the "Customer Signature for Churn Analysis" dataset. Not every dataset you import is going to be clean and perfect. Sometimes you have to give instructions to BULK INSERT. In this case, we have to specify how the columns are separated in the file, and we need to tell it to skip the header row.

In [ ]:

USE demo

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS CustomerSignature

CREATE TABLE CustomerSignature(
recordID NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
state NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
account_length NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
area_code NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
international_plan NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
voice_mail_plan NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
number_vmail_messages NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
total_day_minutes NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
total_day_calls NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
total_day_charge NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
total_eve_minutes NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
total_eve_calls NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
total_eve_charge NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
total_night_minutes NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
total_night_calls NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
total_night_charge NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
total_intl_minutes NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
total_intl_calls NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
total_intl_charge NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
number_customer_service_calls NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
churn NVARCHAR(255) NULL,
customer_id NVARCHAR(255) NULL
)

BULK INSERT CustomerSignature
FROM 'E:\customer_data_edited.csv'
WITH (
FIELDTERMINATOR = ',',
FIRSTROW = 2
);

SELECT * FROM CustomerSignature

DROP TABLE CustomerSignature
Large CSVs Into Data Warehouse Staging Tables