Clustered indexes on non-identity columns to speed up bulk inserts?

Question

My two questions are:

• Can I use clustered indexes to speed up bulk inserts in big tables?
• Can I then still efficiently use foreign key relationships i

Answer 1

Have a look at the System.Data.SqlClient.SqlBulkCopy API. Given your requirements to write signficant numbers of rows in and out of the database, it might be what you need?

Bulk copy streams the data into the table in a single operation then performs the index check once. I use it to copy 500,000 rows in and out of a database table and it's performance is an order of magnitude better than any other technique I've tried, assuming that your application can be structured to take use of the API?