I have an application that uses MS SQL Server for which I'll need to do a bulk insert from a file. The sticking point is that the database and my application will be hosted on separate servers. What is the best way to do a bulk insert across a network? Two ideas I'd come up with so far:
From the app server, share a directory that the db server can find, and do the import using a bulk insert statement from the remote file
Run an FTP server from the db server - when the import is performed, simply ftp the file to the db server and do the import using a bulk insert from the local file (I am leaning towards this option).
Can anyone else tell me if there is a better way to do this, or if not, which one makes the most sense, and why?