Question

I have horizontal table (Table1) and I need it to transform it into (Table2)

Table1:

CEO     SALESMAN    PRODUCT(1)  PRODUCT(2)  PRODUCT(3)  PRODUCT(4)  PRODUCT(5)  ... PRODUCT(N)
------  ----------  ----------  ----------  ----------  ----------  ----------      ----------
MIKE    ANDERSON    76787,00    19388,00    0,00        2723,00     217,00          6581,00
JOHN    ANGELA      0,00        0,00        73088,00    0,00        0,00            0,00
JACK    JEFF        24716,00    0,00        2995,00     0,00        0,00            0,00
STUART  MICHAEL     0,00        23338,00    42656,00    0,00        0,00            0,00

Table2:

CEO     SALESMAN    PRODUCTS    VALUE
------- ----------- ----------  --------
MIKE    ANDERSON    PRODUCT(1)  76787,00
JOHN    ANGELA      PRODUCT(1)  0,00
JACK    JEFF        PRODUCT(1)  24716,00
STUART  MICHAEL     PRODUCT(1)  0,00
MIKE    ANDERSON    PRODUCT(2)  19388,00
JOHN    ANGELA      PRODUCT(2)  0,00
JACK    JEFF        PRODUCT(2)  0,00
STUART  MICHAEL     PRODUCT(2)  23338,00
MIKE    ANDERSON    PRODUCT(3)  0,00
JOHN    ANGELA      PRODUCT(3)  73088,00
JACK    JEFF        PRODUCT(3)  2995,00
STUART  MICHAEL     PRODUCT(3)  42656,00
MIKE    ANDERSON    PRODUCT(4)  2723,00
JOHN    ANGELA      PRODUCT(4)  0,00
JACK    JEFF        PRODUCT(4)  0,00
STUART  MICHAEL     PRODUCT(4)  0,00
MIKE    ANDERSON    PRODUCT(5)  217,00
JOHN    ANGELA      PRODUCT(5)  0,00
JACK    JEFF        PRODUCT(5)  0,00
STUART  MICHAEL     PRODUCT(5)  0,00
MIKE    ANDERSON    ...     ...
JOHN    ANGELA      ...     ...
JACK    JEFF        ...     ...
STUART  MICHAEL     ...     ...
MIKE    ANDERSON    PRODUCT(N)  6581,00
JOHN    ANGELA      PRODUCT(N)  0,00
JACK    JEFF        PRODUCT(N)  0,00
STUART  MICHAEL     PRODUCT(N)  0,00

What I’ve tried so far is to BULK INSERT Table1 into a temporary table and then work with this data until I get what I want. The problem is the N in PRODUCT() columns is variable so I can’t create a temporary table with fixed columns and I need a dynamic query that somehow can read the quantity of products columns and work with it.

BULK INSERT

BULK INSERT #temp
FROM '\\path\file.csv'
WITH
(
FIRSTROW = 1,
FIELDTERMINATOR= ';',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n',
CODEPAGE='RAW'
);

Temporary table:

CREATE TABLE    #temp(
col1    varchar(100)    null,
col2    varchar(100)    null,
col3    varchar(100)    null,
col4    varchar(100)    null,
col5    varchar(100)    null,
...
col397  varchar(100)    null,
col398  varchar(100)    null,
col399  varchar(100)    null,
col400  varchar(100)    null
)

When I run the BULK INSERT I get this error:

Msg 4832, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Bulk load: An unexpected end of file was encountered in the data file.
Msg 7399, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
The OLE DB provider "BULK" for linked server "(null)" reported an error. The provider did not give any information about the error.
Msg 7330, Level 16, State 2, Line 1
Cannot fetch a row from OLE DB provider "BULK" for linked server "(null)".

This happens because I created a temporary table with fixed 400 columns and there were 127 product columns.

I’m trying to avoid things like these:

DECLARE @NUM_ROWS INT

SET     @NUM_ROWS = 123

IF @NUM_ROWS = 1
BEGIN
CREATE TABLE    #temp(
col1    varchar(100)    null
)
END

IF @NUM_ROWS = 2
BEGIN
CREATE TABLE    #temp(
col1    varchar(100)    null,
col2    varchar(100)    null,
)
END

...

IF @NUM_ROWS = 400
BEGIN
CREATE TABLE    #temp(
col1    varchar(100)    null,
col2    varchar(100)    null,
...
col4    varchar(100)    null,
)
END

BULK INSERT #temp
FROM '\\path\file.csv'
WITH
(
FIRSTROW = 1,
FIELDTERMINATOR= ';',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n',
CODEPAGE='RAW'
);

@NUM_ROWS would be the number of columns I would create the temp table.

Does anyone know a way I can import this .csv file into SQL Server dynamically? By dynamically I mean creating a temporary table with the number of columns of PRODUCTS I’m bulk inserting. Or a workaround to avoid that error I posted above.

Answer 1

Here’s a somewhat manual approach:

1. Open the .csv file with Excel
2. Add 400 column names to the first row. They don’t have to be the actual names of the fields of course. Just placeholders. This way, the file will have 400 columns when you resave it. (I call this the manual approach, but you can automate this with a VBA script)

From here on, it’s all SQL:

1. Using a standard bulk insert, import this into a staging table with 400 columns.
2. Insert your data into table2 using something like:

Insert into Table2
Select CEO, Salesmen, 1 as ProductNum, [Product(1)] from Table1 where [Product(1)] is not null
union
Select CEO, Salesmen, 2 as ProductNum, [Product(2)] from Table1 where [Product(2)] is not null
...
union
Select CEO, Salesmen, 400 as ProductNum, [Product(400)] from Table1 where [Product(400)] is not null

Sure, 400 lines of this would be ugly, but you can easily read it and count from 1 to 400.