Question

the task I want to achieve is import XML file into SQL Server. Once prepare the empty table I would load the entire xml file and fill that table. Googling I found that SQL Bulk Insert is suitable so I tested the following code which runs fine:

INSERT INTO Products (sku, product_desc)
SELECT X.product.query('SKU').value('.', 'INT'),
       X.product.query('Desc').value('.', 'VARCHAR(30)')
FROM (
SELECT CAST(x AS XML)
FROM OPENROWSET(
    BULK 'C:\Products.xml',
    SINGLE_BLOB) AS T(x)
    ) AS T(x)
CROSS APPLY x.nodes('Products/Product') AS X(product);

My XML file count around 1860 nodes, (30kb), quite small but the above procedure takes over 5 minutes to import the whole file. Is there any chance to spee up this process?
I’ve also read that SQL Server 2008 have a bug which affect the bulk object.
Any hints?

Answer 1

Try this – I imported a file with 4’096 records from disk in just 53 seconds (on a regular average desktop machine – no high-perf server):

-- declare XML variable
DECLARE @InputXML XML

-- import file from disk
SELECT @InputXML = CAST(x AS XML)
FROM OPENROWSET(BULK 'D:\temp\Products.xml', SINGLE_BLOB) AS T(x)

-- parse XML using XQuery and insert into the table    
INSERT INTO dbo.Products (sku, product_desc)
    SELECT 
        product.value('(SKU)[1]', 'int'),
        product.value('(Desc)[1]', 'varchar(30)')
    FROM @InputXML.nodes('Products/Product') AS X(product)