Importing and Exporting of data in SQL Server

SQL Server is most preferred server, which is the resident of all the data maintained by your organization, company on day-to-day basis. SQL Server provides an effective way to manage the objects and data within the SQL database.

Importing and exporting data in and out of SQL Server is a common scenario.

Retrieving information from external sources into MS SQL Server is called the Importing of data in SQL Server. For example, there is an ASCII text file and you are inserting it into SQL Server tables. Now this is referred as importing data in SQL Server. When you set up SQL Server database, importing of data from some other external source is usually the foremost step, as you have raw SQL Server (with no data within to perform anything). Once data is imported to your SQL Server instance, you are ready to work with the database.

Most of the times, Importing of data into an instance of SQL Server is only one-time event i.e. when you need to start up a new SQL Server database. Once the initial migration is complete, the SQL Server database is used directly for all data-related tasks. There is no need for further data imports. Sometimes, importing can be a regular ongoing activity. Suppose SQL Server database is maintaining executive reporting purposes. You would be requiring updated reporting data from a numerous business applications into the SQL Server database on a regular basis.

Exporting is the opposite of above importing of data. The process of extracting data from an instance of SQL Server to some other user- defined format is known as Exporting of data from SQL Server. For example, you are copying particular content instance from SQL Server table to a MS Access database. This is known as exporting data from SQL Server.

SQL Server comes with special tools and features that let you connect applications such as MS Access or MS Excel to SQL Server, for manipulating the data directly in them. It’s better than copying all the data from an instance of SQL Server to the tool before manipulating. Therefore, the data to be manipulated can be exported to a text file on an ad hoc basis. For example, you can extract data from an instance of SQL Server into an Excel spreadsheet running on a portable computer.

Well, there are tools available with SQL Server for importing and exporting data to and from data sources, including text files, Oracle databases, Sybase database, other instances of SQL Server, ASCII text files, and Excel spreadsheets.

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