Question

I have an INSERT statement that is eating a hell of a lot of log space, so much so that the hard drive is actually filling up before the statement completes.

The thing is, I really don’t need this to be logged as it is only an intermediate data upload step.

For argument’s sake, let’s say I have:

• Table A: Initial upload table (populated using bcp, so no logging problems)
• Table B: Populated using INSERT INTO B from A

Is there a way that I can copy between A and B without anything being written to the log?

P.S. I’m using SQL Server 2008 with simple recovery model.

Answer 1

From Louis Davidson, Microsoft MVP:

There is no way to insert without
logging at all. SELECT INTO is the
best way to minimize logging in T-SQL,
using SSIS you can do the same sort of
light logging using Bulk Insert.

From your requirements, I would
probably use SSIS, drop all
constraints, especially unique and
primary key ones, load the data in,
add the constraints back. I load
about 100GB in just over an hour like
this, with fairly minimal overhead. I
am using BULK LOGGED recovery model,
which just logs the existence of new
extents during the logging, and then
you can remove them later.

The key is to start with barebones
tables, and it just screams. Building
the index once leaves you will no
indexes to maintain, just the one
index build per index.

If you don’t want to use SSIS, the point still applies to drop all of your constraints and use the BULK LOGGED recovery model. This greatly reduces the logging done on INSERT INTO statements and thus should solve your issue.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms191244.aspx