Client-side Bulk-Library routines provide bulk-copy functionality to Client-Library programs. A Client-Library programmer may find bulk-copy useful if the application under development must exchange data with a non-database application, load data into a new database, or move data from one database to another.
A Client-Library application can call Bulk-Library routines to copy data either into a database table or out from a database table.
Bulk-copy-in operations move data from the client machine into a database table and are typically used for database table population. For bulk copies into the database, Bulk-Library transmits tabular data over the network in its “raw” form. Bulk copies into the database can be considerably faster than embedding the data in equivalent SQL insert statements.
Bulk-copy-out operations move data from a database table to the client program’s memory space and are typically used for data extracts. For data extracts, bulk copy offers no performance advantage over the equivalent SQL select statements. However, the Bulk-Library interface may be more convenient for programmers.
Errors
resulting from client-side Bulk-Library routines are reported as Client-Library
errors. Applications should install a Client-Library message callback
to handle these errors or handle them inline with ct_diag.
