A colleague tells me that there is no way to bulk insert UTF-8 encoded data into a Microsoft SQL server 2008.
Can this be true? Is there any stuff you would recommend him to read or look at?
+2
A:
UTF-8 isn't a part of SQL Server's Unicode strategy (unfortunately). However, UTF-8 is well supported in .NET. If you are willing to write .NET code, you could use the System.Data.SqlClient.SqlBulkCopy class in conjunction with a System.IO.StreamReader and/or `System.Text.Encoding.UTF8'.
Another option is Integration Services. For file connections, you can choose code page 65001 (UTF-8).
binarycoder
2009-09-22 11:22:02
Actually, there is no .NET used here. It's a windows development enviroment running Cold Fusion on the server with a MS SQL server 2008 backend. All tools have to understand the encoding chosen. Right now, the chosen encoding is ISO-8859-1 (latin 1).
Jesper Rønn-Jensen
2009-09-23 11:04:39
<Actually, there is no .NET used here> See the part about using Integration Services. Alternatively, if you are into Powershell, you could call all the needed .NET things from there.
binarycoder
2009-09-23 22:26:39
A:
It is true. The documentation for BULK INSERT says 'SQL Server [2008] does not support code page 65001 (UTF-8 encoding)'.
There is also a Connect Page for this issue, although the issue is now closed.
Robert Claypool
2009-10-26 19:54:46