Programming

I've done a lot of work and no, that is not normal.

A few things: First - SQL server has tools for migrating data that's pretty fast. SQL bulk copy can use some of these. Check to see if the built in db tools are better for this.

SQL bulk copy can handle way more than 15,000 records

Why are you wrapping a data dump in a transaction? That will slow things down for sure.

You generally shouldn't be doing huge queries like that to where you're nearing the parameter limit.

Can you share the code?

What is your latency? Can you move data closer to where db is (cloud)? Did you change isolation level? Or recovery model? Did you try bcp? Any indexes you have in table should be deleted?

Just used SqlBulkCopy via C# and .NET a few weeks ago to insert 5-7 million rows into multiple tables in a matter of seconds.

I don't think any of my tables had 50 columns, but one had maybe half of that. Reading your other posts, my experience was different in these ways:

• Not using Python but C#
• The machine performing the insert was physically close to the SQL server and did not utilize WAN. (Not sure if this applies to you as well, I don't recall you saying)
• I don't remember putting a transaction on the insert. I just followed Microsoft's examples from the documentation. A transaction I think has a chance of nullifying the speed you gain from using bulk insert.

Lastly I think you should consider being be more respectful in some of your replies. We all get being frustrated with technology, but you don't need to extend that to people who are helping you for free.

Try BCP. I'm fairly new to the Microsoft landscape too, but found using BCP really helped with efficiency on loading.

Omg it’s sooo daammmn slooow it takes around 30 seconds to bulk - insert 15000 rows

Do you have any measurements on how long it takes when you just 'do it raw'? Like trying to do the same insert though SQL Server Management Studio or something?

Because to me it's not really clear what's slow. Like you're complaining specifically about the Microsoft ODBC driver - but do you base that on anything? Can you insert faster from Linux or through other means?

Like if it's just 'always slow' it might just be the SQL Server. If you can better pinpoint when it's slow, and when it's fast(er) that probably helps to tell how to speed it up

A friend of a friend found that exporting to csv and importing is the fastest route. Honestly crazy, but I recreated a test and it's actually a little faster (when dumping and recreating the whole table, ymmv when inserting).

I'm not 100% sure if it was MSSQL, though.

Been a little while since I worked on ODBC stuff, but I have a couple of thoughts:

• Would it be possible to use something like a table function on the DB side to simplify the query from the ODBC side?

• I could be misremembering, but I feel like looping through individual inserts with an open connection was faster than trying to submit data in bulk when inserting that much data in one shot. Might be worth doing a benchmark in a test DB and table to confirm.

I know I was able to insert more than 50M rows in a manner of single digit hours, but unfortunately don't have access to that codebase anymore to double check the specifics.