Supplying Hints to bcp

The SQL Server 2012 version of bcp enables you to further control the speed of data loading, to invoke constraints, and to have insert triggers fired during loads. To take advantage of these capabilities, you use hint switches to specify one or more hints at a time. Following is the syntax:

–h "hint [, hint]"

The query processor optimizes data loads and unloads for OLE database rowsets that the latest versions of bcp and BULK INSERT can generate.

The following sections describe the various hints you can specify with the –h switch.

The ROWS_PER_BATCH Hint

The ROWS_PER_BATCH hint is used to tell SQL Server the total number of rows in the data file. This hint helps SQL Server optimize the entire load operation. This hint ...

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