BCP IN: create table on-the-fly

[Test Test]

Hello!

I have a BCP file (.BCP) and I want to do a BCP IN but I don't have a
table associated with it. (Lets say table got dropped). I am curious if
there is a way to create a table on-the-fly while doing BCP IN? Any neat
solution?

Thanks!


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[Andrew J. Kelly]

Whats wrong with CREATE TABLE xxx?
--
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP

Post by Test Test
Hello!
I have a BCP file (.BCP) and I want to do a BCP IN but I don't have a
table associated with it. (Lets say table got dropped). I am curious if
there is a way to create a table on-the-fly while doing BCP IN? Any neat
solution?
Thanks!
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[Test Test]

Lets say ..I dont know the table structure. All I have found is a .BCP
file which is a binary file and can not be opened in text editor.

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[Erland Sommarskog]

Post by Test Test
Lets say ..I dont know the table structure. All I have found is a .BCP
file which is a binary file and can not be opened in text editor.

You now have a challenge. You see, there is not one possible table for
this file - but many. Some of them, makes more sense than others.

The file itself contains records only - there is no metadata. So all
you can to is to analyse combinations of bytes. Hm, here is a long
sequence of bytes with the ASCII codes of letter. Probably a character
string. And here is a sequence where every second byte is 0. Might
be Unicode.

In short, this will keep you busy a couple of days!

[ML]

In addition to what Erland suggested, I'd start looking for the format file -
if there ever was one, or some documentation to what this BCP file was used
for.


ML

---
http://milambda.blogspot.com/