Posted by Erland Sommarskog on 10/15/07 21:56

jims (jim@asrc.cestm.albany.edu) writes:
> I was wondering if anybody could piont me to a reference for the .bak
> file format.
>
> I need to upload a huge amount of data from a unix machine into an MS
> SQLServer database and have tried lots of different things with mixed
> results.
>
> I occurs to me that if I can generate a .bak file on the unix side,
> move it over to the MS side and 'restore' the database, that would
> probably be the fastest possible method.

It would take you ages until you have produced that .bak file. Your data
will be stale by then.

The fastest way to load lots of data into SQL Server is bulk copy. You have
a lot more options if you first put the file in a place where you can access
it from Windows. The simplest is probably to use the command-line tool
BCP. You need to format the data in a way so that BCP can read it. (But
BCP is flexible.)




--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server 2005 at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/downloads/books.mspx
Books Online for SQL Server 2000 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/previousversions/books.mspx

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