Question

I have an unbound DataGridView with one visible field.

The user can copy data, from the clipboard, into this DGV in a similar manner to this article

Now I’d like to move this data into a table on SQL Server.

It’s been suggested to me to do the following:

• Create a stored procedure that takes a single parameter and writes that input to a table
• Loop through the items in the DGV feeding each into the stored procedure and therefore writing them to the table

Can I not just grab all the items in the DGV and insert them into the target table at once, without having to loop?

Or is the loop method (with upto 2,000 iterations) the best practice in such a situation? (Or is there no particular best practice?!)

Answer 1

If you are looking at using a stored proc, then you can follow some of the examples of passing arrays of values proposed examples by Erland Sommarskog;

Take a look at;

http://www.sommarskog.se/arrays-in-sql-2008.html <- For SS 2008 based around Table Valued Parameters.

http://www.sommarskog.se/arrays-in-sql-2005.html <- Options for SS 2005. I’ve used the XML method quite a few times and found it quite useful.

If you are using SS 2008, then you could possibly investigate his example of using the datatable as a source.

Not sure if these are considered best practice or not, but it is certainly food for thought.