Using Parallel Bulk Copy on Round-robin Partitioned Tables

• Specify the partition by appending a colon (:) plus the partition number to the table name. For example:

  publishers:10

  Note: The partition you specify must exist before you issue the bcp command.

• Split the sorted data into separate files, or delineate the “files” by specifying the first row (-F first_row) and the last row (-L last_row) of the host file.

• Note the number of partitions in the table, as this number limits the number of parallel bulk copy sessions that you can start.

  For example, if a table has four partitions, and you start five parallel bulk copy jobs, only the first four jobs can run in parallel; the fifth job does not start until one of the first four jobs finish.

bcp copies each file or set of line numbers to a separate partition. For example, to use parallel bulk copy to copy in sorted data to mydb..bigtable from four files into four partitions, enter:

bcp mydb..bigtable:1 in file1 -Pmypassword -c &
bcp mydb..bigtable:2 in file2 -Pmypassword -c &
bcp mydb..bigtable:3 in file3 -Pmypassword -c &
bcp mydb..bigtable:4 in file4 -Pmypassword -c &