SQL does not rely on the format of the underlying data store. I've been impressed by the Jet Engine's ability to work over ODBC with flat and CSV files,...

Excellent!

I have reached the stage in life where if it isn't scripted, I screw it up. How nice to learn about yet another scripting strategy.

A good starting point is in Jeffs sig:

First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:

Stop thinking about what you want to do to a row... think,...

I second the votes for iPhone, internet, Google, Excel, Word, Access, relational data bases, etc.

But when I need them, things like regular expressions, scripting languages (VBA, Perl, Korn Shell,...

Thanks!

I guess my concern was largely esthetic; just hated to see all those coalesce/case statements cluttering up the code. What I finally settled on doing was hiding the convoluted code...

Love them (based on a sampling size of 2). Where is the checkbox for LMAO! Should be a daily feature!

Glad you solved your problem (and I learned from it) but what about the case where you want to specify another name for the destination file?

Steve: I'm confused by the recent Lynn/jgangemi posts also, but my original post (from 11/20/2008) remains intact, although unaddressed.

I'd blame SQL Server ??

I am delighted to see: "Its Jeff and Gilamonster" right there at the top of the list.

Thanks guys!

Thanks to you both! That should get me started.

Error messages from BULK IMPORT or BCP that provide some useful information about the nature of the error.

Native ability to import fixed format flat files with sign over punches and...

I finally decided there was little advantage, and too many disadvantages, to using the SSMS solutions. All my SQL is now kept and opened directly from the file system....

Eureka!! Using PASSWORD = did the trick.

What would I do without you guys!

(Now I need to figure out a WITH MOVE clause, but that got me over hurdle #1)

Thanks very...

Noeld: You are right, but can you shed some light on why it is necessary to resort to dynamic SQL to get this to work?

I have hit the same...

Yes, yes, and I don't know what they were thinking either. The source is a very old mainframe system, and the use of the SSN as the identifying key...