Re: Save DTS Package?

From: SqlGuy (homeNONO_at_gregNOscottNO.COM)
Date: 09/29/04 

Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 03:57:18 GMT

Reading the other messages, I think that it's likely that you can use
ONE file structure for all your tables, consisting of a lot of
varchar(255) fields. Considering that, there might be a way to simplify
your task of importing all the data. You could merely import them all
into the same file.

At the command line type FOR /?, and you'll see a very powerful syntax
for executing commands on sets of files, or on lines of files
The commands for sets of files include special options to allow parsing
of file name and path components, date, time, size.
Basicly, for each file, for each line in each file, you can echo the
line itself, but with a "filename", prefix at the beginning, and convert
1000s of files into a single input file. with a "table-name" column at
the beginning serving as a record type. With conversion to a more
efficient field, or not, this might even be an efficient way to store
all this data. I'd rather have all this data in one table than 1000s of
tables. That sounds like a process that already out of control from
initial design. I'm sure it could work. You could do it with ONE common
FMT file and BCP, since all files have the same inherent structure. if
you have rights to do XP_CMDSHELL or some related commands, you can
return a list of the files as a result set, which I would place in a log
table. Then you could process those records in the log table, and log
process status appropriately. There are several alternative approaches
here. I think that i'd rather use the common FMT file and just BCP them
all in. Doesn't anybody know the "DOS" commands these days? I know I
have a harder and harder time finding their documentation each time a
new windows version comes out.

-- An old fogey.