Filling SQL database table from a txt file - How do I do it?

RushNP774 · March 12th, 2009, 04:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gbianchi

even quicker way to solve it.. load the file in excel, copy all the cells, open the table in VS express, paste the cells :)

That would be fantastic if I could do that, but I can't get it to work. It just copies the first cell. I tried copying from the text file as well as the excel file. Am I missing something?

gbianchi · March 12th, 2009, 05:21 PM

Don't put the cursor on the first cell of the destination table, select all the row and it will work. ;) (select the row pressing on the gray area of the left, where the little arrow is, then paste there)

RushNP774 · March 13th, 2009, 12:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gbianchi

Don't put the cursor on the first cell of the destination table, select all the row and it will work. ;) (select the row pressing on the gray area of the left, where the little arrow is, then paste there)

Still didn't work. I thought it seemed too easy

Lee Dumond · March 13th, 2009, 12:55 AM

I'm not getting what's happening here. I've never hear of being able to "paste" a column of values into a SQL Server table. That's certainly a new one on me...

RushNP774 · March 13th, 2009, 01:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lee Dumond

I'm not getting what's happening here. I've never hear of being able to "paste" a column of values into a SQL Server table. That's certainly a new one on me...

I haven't heard of it either, but I was hoping it was true. Oh well...

RushNP774 · March 13th, 2009, 02:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lee Dumond

Curious, what is your blog address?

Sorry, I missed this reply in our chatter

It's called ASP.NET Place, and I only started it a couple weeks ago when I started learning .NET. I figure it'd be a good place to post about interesting articles I find, as well as simple tutorials for things that I have a hard time accomplishing (like this).

gbianchi · March 13th, 2009, 07:24 AM

Rush and lee.. I tried that, but on an MDB (but I'm sure you can do it on SQL server too, it's all microsoft!) anyway, the other simple method, is to construct the insert on excel and run them on the query analyzer;)

1- get the data to excel.
2- in the next cell write "insert into YOURTABLE value ('"
3- in the next cell write "')"
4- in the fourth cell concat all the strings (second cell + first cell + third cell)
copy this for all the cells ;)

now copy all the concatenated querys to the query analizer inside VS (bah, where you do the querys). Execute it and VOILA!

There is always a quick solution for everything.

RushNP774 · March 13th, 2009, 12:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gbianchi

...the other simple method, is to construct the insert on excel and run them on the query analyzer;)

1- get the data to excel.
2- in the next cell write "insert into YOURTABLE value ('"
3- in the next cell write "')"
4- in the fourth cell concat all the strings (second cell + first cell + third cell)
copy this for all the cells ;)

now copy all the concatenated querys to the query analizer inside VS (bah, where you do the querys). Execute it and VOILA!

You make things sound so easy (and I'm SURE there has to be an easy solution for this), but I'm just so new to all of this that I don't understand a word you're saying

.

I have the data in Excel, but it's only the 2nd column in my DB "Name". I'd like to run some kind of action to create a new record (so the primary key generates an "Id" for it), inserts the value from my text file into the second column ("Name"), and leaves the third column ("Category") blank (which I'll fill in later once I get my dropdownlist box binding correctly).

I guess I'm not clear on a couple things you've said:

Where do I write "insert into YOURTABLE value ("? Is that in a table cell, a SQL statement, or somewhere else?
Is "VALUE" actually that word, or should that be something else?
What about for ")" or the concatenation string you mentioned? Where does that go and why are there three values in there when all I need & have is one value to insert?
"Copy this for all the cell." Do you mean once I have this concatenation statement created, copy & paste it manually into the 250 rows of my table? If so, I might as well just hand-enter all my values.

Again, I'm probably misunderstanding something you've said, and I apologize. This just seems like a kind of function MS would have built into VWD/VS or their database editor to make it super easy and it's turning out to be a nightmare.

Lee Dumond · March 13th, 2009, 01:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gbianchi

Rush and lee.. I tried that, but on an MDB (but I'm sure you can do it on SQL server too, it's all microsoft!).

An MDB is an file you can open in Access. Of course, if you open a database in Access, then you can paste into it.

However, there is no way you are going to paste a column of values into an MDF. That doesn't make any sense. MDFs are meant to be edited using DDL. There's no such concept as "pasting" data into an MDF.

Quote:

Originally Posted by gbianchi

anyway, the other simple method, is to construct the insert on excel and run them on the query analyzer;)

1- get the data to excel.
2- in the next cell write "insert into YOURTABLE value ('"
3- in the next cell write "')"
4- in the fourth cell concat all the strings (second cell + first cell + third cell)
copy this for all the cells ;)

now copy all the concatenated querys to the query analizer inside VS (bah, where you do the querys). Execute it and VOILA!

Ah yes, I get it. That would work. Never thought of that. That's actually pretty clever Gonz!

. And, probably a lot faster than using a file I/O thing like a StreamReader for a one-time procedure.

Although when I get time, I may still do a blog post on reading text files into a table using a StreamReader. In fact, I would probably make it more general by showing how to read character-delimited lines of entire records, so that you could read and insert multiple columns of data instead of just one value per line.

gbianchi · March 13th, 2009, 01:15 PM

Well, you have that build in function capability in SQL, you can really do an import process from a file into a table..

Also you can modify the txt file to do the update for you.

What you need is an insert statement for every row.
(a statement like

Code:

INSERT INTO table1 VALUES ('textvalue')

)

the autonumeric column will fill by itself. My question at this point is, can you just go and get the original db and start again?

There are a lot of ways to do this, but I think you first need to learn a little about SQL to understand how it works. If you are working againts a database, we will not be very helpfull just telling you how to make the SQL. Even further, understanding it a little will help you in the future...