>Is there a VERY fast way of inserting records into a SQL Server database (from VisBasic or VisC or VisFoxPro or wherever). I have a friend whose company collects gobs of data (serially) in real time (in VisC) from a manufacturing machine and currently writes data to text files that are then parsed later for analysis. We're talking a factor of a record/second here. There is a demand to have the data in a database, and they're wondering if it's realistic to do it in real time. It seems to me that doing an INSERT command via ODBC would carry a lot of overhead for the type of volume we're talking about here. They're wondering if there is a way that data can be slammed into a table, even keeping numbers in a binary format to eliminate the overhead of conversion, if that's even possible. Is there such an avenue?
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>My gut feeling says no. Unless there is some special way of doing this, I'm thinking that doing a mass batch insert at a later time (from their text file output) would be better.
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>Any thoughts? What would be the ultimate fastest way of inserting this kind of volume of records into a table?
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>Thanks...
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>--Brad

I don't think you would be taxing a SQL Server by placing records in at the rate you are saying you need, but I would suggest doing it in a batch - say at the end of a day.