Question

I’m building an offline C# application that will import data off spread sheets and store them in a SQL Database that I have created (Inside the Project). Through some research I have been able to use some code that can import a static table, into a Database that is exactly the same layout as the columns in the worksheet

What I”m looking to do is have specific columns go to their correct tables based on name. This way I have the database designed correctly and not just have one giant table to store everything.

Below is the code I’m using to import a few static fields into one table, I want to be able to split the imported data into more than one.

What is the best way to do this?

public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        string strConnection = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings
        ["Test3.Properties.Settings.Test3ConnectionString"].ConnectionString;

        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {


            //Create connection string to Excel work book
            string excelConnectionString =
            @"Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;
            Data Source=C:\Test.xls;
            Extended Properties=""Excel 8.0;HDR=YES;""";

            //Create Connection to Excel work book
            OleDbConnection excelConnection = new OleDbConnection(excelConnectionString);

            //Create OleDbCommand to fetch data from Excel
            OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand
            ("Select [Failure_ID], [Failure_Name], [Failure_Date], [File_Name], [Report_Name], [Report_Description], [Error] from [Failures$]", excelConnection);

            excelConnection.Open();
            OleDbDataReader dReader;
            dReader = cmd.ExecuteReader();

            SqlBulkCopy sqlBulk = new SqlBulkCopy(strConnection);
            sqlBulk.DestinationTableName = "Failures";
            sqlBulk.WriteToServer(dReader);

        }

Answer 1

If you were looking for a more code related answer, you could use the following to modify your code to work with difficult column names / different tables:

    private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        //Create connection string to Excel work book
        string excelConnectionString =
        @"Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;
        Data Source=C:\Test.xls;
        Extended Properties=""Excel 8.0;HDR=YES;""";

        //Create Connection to Excel work book
        OleDbConnection excelConnection = new OleDbConnection(excelConnectionString);

        //Create OleDbCommand to fetch data from Excel
        OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand
        ("Select [Failure_ID], [Failure_Name], [Failure_Date], [File_Name], [Report_Name], [Report_Description], [Error] from [Failures$]", excelConnection);

        excelConnection.Open();

        DataTable dataTable = new DataTable();
        dataTable.Columns.Add("Id", typeof(System.Int32));
        dataTable.Columns.Add("Name", typeof(System.String));
        // TODO: Complete other table columns
        using(OleDbDataReader dReader = cmd.ExecuteReader())
        {
            DataRow dataRow = dataTable.NewRow();
            dataRow["Id"] = dReader.GetInt32(0);
            dataRow["Name"] = dReader.GetString(1);
            // TODO: Complete other table columns
            dataTable.Rows.Add(dataRow);
        }

        SqlBulkCopy sqlBulk = new SqlBulkCopy(strConnection);
        sqlBulk.DestinationTableName = "Failures";
        sqlBulk.WriteToServer(dataTable);
    }

Now you can control the names of the columns and which tables the data gets imported into. SqlBulkCopy is good for insert large amounts of data. If you only have a small amount of rows, you might be better off creating a standard data access layer to insert your records.