Supplying Hints to bcp

The SQL Server 2008 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]"

This option cannot be used when bulk-copying data into versions of SQL Server before version 7.0 because, starting with SQL Server 7.0, bcp works in conjunction with the query processor. 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 ...

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