And I was trying out visual studio 2008 and SQL server 2008 these days. And last night I found out that SQL server now support Tabled valued Parameters which allow us to send data tables as parameters to stored procedures. It still uses the same ADO.Net API.

Now I’m going to show how it works. For this I’m using the same scenario which I used in my previous post (reading contents of a folder and saving their information). here i have used sql server 2008 november ctp and visual c# 2008 express edition.

First create the table given below:

CREATE TABLE FileDetails(
FileName varchar(50) PRIMARY KEY,
CreatedDate varchar(50) ,
Size decimal(18, 0) )

Then, we should declare a new Table User Defined Type in the database:

create type FileDetailsType as table
(
FileName varchar(50),
CreatedDate varchar(50),
Size decimal(18,0)
)

Then create a stored procedure that gets a parameter of the above type, and inserts many rows in a single command.

create procedure InsertFileDetails
(
@FileDetails FileDetailsType readonly
)
as

insert
into FileDetails (FileName, CreatedDate, Size)
select FileName, CreatedDate, Size
from @FileDetails;

Then to execute this procedure, we can create a data table and add the rows in to it. And then pass this data table as parameter to the database.

private static void SaveFileDetail(List<FileInfo> info)

{

Console.WriteLine(“**********updating with tablevalued parameters****”);

DataTable dt = preparedatatable();

foreach (FileInfo file in info)

{

DataRow dr = dt.NewRow();

dr[0] = file.Name;

dr[1] = file.CreationTime.ToShortDateString();

dr[2] = (decimal)file.Length;

dt.Rows.Add(dr);

}

using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(“your connection string”))

{

SqlCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand();

cmd.CommandType = System.Data.CommandType.StoredProcedure;

cmd.CommandText = “dbo.InsertFileDetails”;

SqlParameter param = cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue(“@FileDetails”, dt);

conn.Open();

cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();

Console.WriteLine(“Completed Updating the database”);

}

Now that’s cool isn’t it????

Download the code

And few more minutes of research I found out how to perform bulk operations against the databases using OPENXML and stored procedures.

What is OPENXML?

OPENXML is a function added to SQL Server 2000 that provides a row set view over an XML document. Since a row set is simply a set of rows that contain columns of data, OPENXML is the function that allows an XML document to be treated in the familiar relational database format. It allows for the passing of an XML document to a T-SQL stored procedure for updating the data.

OPENXML- Summery

• It extends the SQL Language
• It is used within T-SQL Stored Procedures
  • XML Document passed as parameter
• It uses row and column selectors utilizing XPath
• It supports the following:
  • Attribute and element-centric mappings.
  • Edge table row set.
  • XML annotation/overflow column.
  • Hierarchy support.

OPENXML and ADO.Net

This code block explains the usage of OPENXML to insert bulk data to database. It simulates the actual process I wanted ( processing .eml files) by reading files in a folder and saving their names, created date and size in bytes.

1. First create the table below:
   

   CREATE TABLE FileDetails(

   FileName varchar(50) PRIMARY KEY,

   CreatedDate varchar(50) ,

   Size decimal(18, 0) )

2. And then create the stored procedure below:
   

   CREATE PROC sp_bulkinsert @xmldata varchar(max)

   AS

   DECLARE @hDoc int

   exec sp_xml_preparedocument @hDoc OUTPUT,@xmldata

   –inserting data

   Insert Into FileDetails

   SELECT FileName, CreatedDate, Size

   FROM OPENXML (@hdoc, ‘/ds/fileDetails’,2)

   WITH (FileName varchar(50), CreatedDate Datetime, Size decimal) XMLFileDetails

   Where XMLFileDetails.FileName Not IN (Select FileName from FileDetails)

   EXEC sp_xml_removedocument @hDoc

   GO

3. The below sample code snippet shows how to call this stored procedure to insert bulk data to database at once.

We can retrieve the file details using FileInfo() objects and create a Dataset of the file details and then we can convert this Dataset to xml using WriteXml() Method of the Dataset.

private static string preparexml(DataSet ds)

{

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(sb);

ds.WriteXml(sw, XmlWriteMode.WriteSchema);

return sb.ToString();

}

This xml representation of the data can be passed as the parameter to the stored procedure as given below :

private static void bulkInsert(string xml)

{

try{

SqlConnection con = creatCon();

con.Open();

SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand(“sp_bulkinsert”, con);

cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;

cmd.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter(“@xmldata”,SqlDbType.VarChar));

cmd.Parameters["@xmldata"].Value=xml;

cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();

Console.WriteLine(“Completed inserting file informations to database”);

con.Close();

}

catch(Exception ex)

{

Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);

}

}

That’s all simple isn’t it? You can see the performance of this method by writing another code to insert the same fields using the traditional 1 at a time way. Which surprisingly will show a huge difference in performance and time.

You can use the same way to update, delete records in bulk.

The complete code can be downloaded and tested in the below link :

Complete Source Code