Can Sql Server BULK INSERT read from a named pipe/fifo?

Question

Is it possible for BULK INSERT/bcp to read from a named pipe, fifo-style?

That is, rather than reading from a real text file, can BULK INSERT/bcp be made to read fro

Answer 1

I have succeeded in getting BULK INSERT (but not BCP) to work correctly with named pipes on Windows 7 ans SQL Server 2008R2. There are some tricks.

First, I had to create two named pipe instances on two different threads, both with the same pipe name. SQL Server would open the first instance, read a few bytes from it, and close it, causing WriteFile to raise a PipeException in the first thread. SQL Server would then immediately reopen the named pipe, and stream in all of the data from it. If I didn't have a second thread sitting in the background ready to serve the data, SQL server would return an error before my first thread had time to recover from the PipeException.

Second, I had to write all of the data in a single call to WriteFile. I started with a loop where I wrote multiple batches to the pipe, but BULK INSERT only used the first batch that I wrote. It seems to do a non-blocking read, and treat any read that returns zero bytes as an end-of-file.

Third, an XML format file, if used, must be written to a regular file. I have not succeeded in getting SQL Server to read the format file from a pipe. I don't know if it can read a non-XML format file from a pipe.