In my earlier blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlserverstorageengine/archive/2008/10/24/new-update-on-minimal-logging-for-sql-server-2008.aspx , we discussued how we can get minimal logging using TF-610 when using TSQL INSERT statement. Interestingly, you can get minimal logging when using MERGE statement...

Based on the customer feedback, we have decided to make minimal logging functionality into a btree available to SQL 2008 customers. All you need to do is to enable TF-610 in RTM bits. As a cautionary note, we have seen some slowdown if you are loading data into a btrree using TF-610 on a slower IO subsystem...

So far we had discussed ( http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlserverstorageengine/archive/2008/03/23/minimal-logging-changes-in-sql-server-2008-part-2.aspx ) how minimal logging changes impact when you are moving data from one table to another table. Now let us look at how does this change more conventional bulk...

In the previous example http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlserverstorageengine/archive/2008/03/06/minimal-logging-changes-in-sql-server-2008-part-1.aspx , I described minimal logging while moving data from a source table into a heap. You may recall that it requires a X table lock to get minimal logging. Now, I...

Please refer to the earlier post for the background information on minimal logging. Starting with SQL Server 2008, the minimal logging has been enhanced. These enhancements are available to regular TSQL Insert as well. One of the key customer scenario was to be able to transfer data from a staging table...

In the previous blog I had listed all bulk import optimizations. Now, I will describe each of these optimizations in detail in separate blog entries. Let me first start with minimal logging. By the way minimal logging is also called bulk-logging but the correct term is 'minimal logging'. Bulk logging...

Bulk import provides an optimized insert path that minimizes this overhead with following optimizations · Minimal Logging: under this logging mode, individual rows are not logged and only the changes to page allocation structures are logged. This reduces the amount of logging significantly. · BU...

Most IT shops using SQL Server need to load/import large amount of data obtained from external sources or from another Database Server into SQL Sever. It is typcially done using the optimized insert path provided by SQL Server through Bulk Insert and BCP commands. Customers often wonder what optimizations...

I recently ran into a customer who wanted to import data into a table that did not allow NULL for one column. However, his data file had some rows that had NULL for that column. He tried the following Bulk Insert command bulk insert customer.dbo.test from 'c:\data.txt' with (maxerrors = 20) but this...

When bulk importing data, the data can come from any source including the files created in other operating systems like UNIX. Here are two ways that you can use to bulk import a data file created under UNIX. · Without using a format file You can use the following script to bulk load. DECLARE...

Before SQL2005, you could use Bulk Insert or BCP to import data into SQL Server. While both of these mechanisms have been popular and used widely, they don't provide any processing of input data before bulk importing into the target table. If you need to preprocess the data, you can use DTS (aka SSIS...