Question

I need to export data to a file from a huge table with only one column but thousands of rows where the ordering of row is important. I am using bcp command as below
bcp DBNAME.dbo.tblName out mydata.dat -Uusername -Ppassword -c
I checked with the table having 10 rows and I see that the order of the rows is maintained in the data file. But can I assume bcp would maintain the order if the number of rows is say more than 10000?

Answer 1

I think it will if you use a sql statement (with ORDER BY) in your bcp command:

http://www.sqlteam.com/article/exporting-data-programatically-with-bcp-and-xp_cmdshell

where they have the following example:

SET @bcpCommand = 'bcp "SELECT * FROM pubs..authors 
   ORDER BY au_lname" queryout "'