2.7. Bulk Copy Program (BCP)
If SSIS is "your friend and mine," then The Bulk Copy Program, or bcp, would be that old friend that we may not see that much any more, but we really appreciate when we do see them.
BCP is a command-line program, and its sole purpose in life is to move formatted data in and out of SQL Server en masse. It was around long before what has now become SSIS was thought of, and while SSIS is replacing BCP for most import/export activity, BCP still has a certain appeal to people who like command-line utilities. In addition, you'll find an awful lot of SQL Server installations out there that still depend on BCP to move data around fast. We discuss BCP fully in Chapter 18.
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