Bulk Import XML into SQL Server - sql

Question

I was looking at these examples on Microsoft.com here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316005
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa225754%28v=sql.80%29.aspx
But it's saying in part of it's steps that VBScript code has to be executed, and I wasn't able to find where the VBScript should be executed. Is it possible to be executed in SQL Server itself?
The code from the site looks something like this:
Set objBL = CreateObject("SQLXMLBulkLoad.SQLXMLBulkLoad")
objBL.ConnectionString = "provider=SQLOLEDB.1;data source=MySQLServer;
database=MyDatabase;uid=MyAccount;pwd=MyPassword"
objBL.ErrorLogFile = "c:\error.log"
objBL.Execute "c:\customermapping.xml", "c:\customers.xml"
Set objBL = Nothing
This looks like it could be executed in classic asp or something, but I prefer to keep it inside SQL Server. Does anyone know how to execute something like this all with-in SQL Server? or does anyone have a better method for Bulk import XML into SQL server?

Answer 1

SQL Server is capable of reading XML and inserting it as you need. Here is an example of an XML file and insertion pulled from here:
XML:
<Products>
<Product>
<SKU>1</SKU>
<Desc>Book</Desc>
</Product>
<Product>
<SKU>2</SKU>
<Desc>DVD</Desc>
</Product>
<Product>
<SKU>3</SKU>
<Desc>Video</Desc>
</Product>
</Products>
Insert statement that is parsing the XML:
INSERT INTO Products (sku, product_desc)
SELECT X.product.query('SKU').value('.', 'INT'),
X.product.query('Desc').value('.', 'VARCHAR(30)')
FROM (
SELECT CAST(x AS XML)
FROM OPENROWSET(
BULK 'C:\Products.xml',
SINGLE_BLOB) AS T(x)
) AS T(x)
CROSS APPLY x.nodes('Products/Product') AS X(product);

Answer 2

I tried this and for 975 rows from a 1MB XML file, this took about 2.5 minutes to execute on a very fast PC.
I switched to using OpenXml in a multi-step process and process takes less than a second.
CREATE TABLE XMLwithOpenXML
(
Id INT IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY,
XMLData XML,
LoadedDateTime DATETIME
)
INSERT INTO XMLwithOpenXML(XMLData, LoadedDateTime)
SELECT CONVERT(XML, BulkColumn) AS BulkColumn, GETDATE()
FROM OPENROWSET(BULK 'clients.xml', SINGLE_BLOB) AS x;
DECLARE #XML AS XML, #hDoc AS INT, #SQL NVARCHAR (MAX)
SELECT #XML = XMLData FROM XMLwithOpenXML WHERE ID = '1' -- The row to process
EXEC sp_xml_preparedocument #hDoc OUTPUT, #XML
INSERT INTO Clients
SELECT CustomerID, CustomerName
FROM OPENXML(#hDoc, 'Clients/Client')
WITH
(
CustomerID [varchar](50) 'ID',
CustomerName [varchar](100) 'Name'
)
EXEC sp_xml_removedocument #hDoc
GO
I got this from here:
http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/2899/importing-and-processing-data-from-xml-files-into-sql-server-tables/
Basically you load the XML into a table as a big blob of text, then you use OpenXml to process it.