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 Import/Export (DTS) and Replication (2000)
 Help on BCP and the FMT file

Author  Topic 

LeoC
Starting Member

37 Posts

Posted - 2005-10-05 : 16:48:42
All,
I had a good working BCP and FMT until last month when the data was changed. More fields were added, no problem there.
But after some research and the source (MainFrame) input we have a problem I haven't seen before.
The problem is basically one (1) more delimiter of course randomly. Mi delimiter is the regular 'pipe ( | )', the problem presents when one of the text fields has "appended" two (2) regular valid data into one field but using the "pipe" within the field itself to append these 2 pieces of data in the same field delimited by the same delimiter.
Thus, some rows I have the regular delimiter count (i.e. 94 vs. the wrong ones 95).
I wonder if there is a way to use "field quoted delimiter" in the format file. Soon I'll be having the same problem in tables that are much bigger wide and long thus I had to split the load into 2 SQL tables as recomended in this forum.
Sample:
...|field2|field3|field4a | field4b|field5|... see that field4 is 2 texts, reason why I was thinking on Quoted Field Delimiter but it has to be alloed in a format file.

Any ideas, suggestions or recommendations will be GREATLY appreciate it.

For other valid reasons we have to stick to BCPs command line with handly created Format file; as I said id was working perfectly until the number of field with the sample 'field4' came up and very likely show the same effect in table that could not handle DTS.

Thanks a lot in advance for any response and/or idea to solve the issue.

p/s: changing delimiter more than likely will create problems in other areas, so I'm trying to avoid that approach.



lec.

nr
SQLTeam MVY

12543 Posts

Posted - 2005-10-06 : 04:08:09
See
http://www.mindsdoor.net/SQLTsql/BCP_quoted_CSV_Format_file.html
It shows how to deal with quote delimitted strings in a format file. It's for comma delimtted but easy to change for pipe delimitted.

If your files are not very big or performance is not an issue then it's easier to use a function to split up the columns.

==========================================
Cursors are useful if you don't know sql.
DTS can be used in a similar way.
Beer is not cold and it isn't fizzy.
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