Garrett,
I have generated program that runs nightly to download in excess of 500 mb from Informix to SQL 6.5. Basically, it runs VFP remote views of the Infomix data, converts the remote view to text via COPY TO SDF, and a SQL stored procedure run the BCP task. I leave all datatypes as character and do the little bit of numeric and date conversion required in the VFP applications that use the SQL tables. The download/conversion usually runs about five hours of which 55 minutes is the BCP and DBCC stuff. IMHO, remote views are slow.

I have just within the last two weeks managed to conned our Informix programmer into doing the data extraction and text conversion on the Informix side, eliminating the VFP views. The Informix download (still 500mb) last night took 1 hour 56 minutes and my BCP/DBCC took 56 minutes. This is all running over a WAN on a T1 between San Antonio and Redwood Shores, CA.

SQL 7.0 DTS looks like it has possibilities but, like you said, it's still a little rough around the edges. I have tried to duplicate the same routines discussed above using DTS but have run into problems with datetime and text conversions. HTH - Bob


>Another person in the office has asked me to post the following question.
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>I'm writing a script-generator.. which gen's BCP ".FMT" files.. and prepares VFP data via SQL SELECT and COPY to... to QUICKly copy data from VFP to SQL (the Upsizing wizard's much too slow... SQL7's DTS is a bit slow... and still has enough rough edges to warrant further investigation into alternative methods).
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>Has anyone else done this? How have they handled date format?
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