Load very big CSV-Files into s SQL-Server database

Question

Is there a performant way to load very big CSV-files (which have size of several gigabytes) into an SQL-Server 2008 database with .NET?

Answer 1

Use SqlBulkCopy http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.sqlclient.sqlbulkcopy.aspx

Answer 2

I would combine this CSV reader with SqlBulkCopy; i.e.

using (var file = new StreamReader(path))
using (var csv = new CsvReader(file, true)) // true = has header row
using (var bcp = new SqlBulkCopy(connection)) {
    bcp.DestinationTableName = "TableName";
    bcp.WriteToServer(csv);
}

This uses the bulk-copy API to do the inserts, while using a fully-managed (and fast) IDataReader implementation (crucially, which streams the data, rather than loading it all at once).

Answer 3

Look into using the SQLBulkCopy class.