Using ASP.NET to Generate SQL Server Bulk Copy Commands

When developing clients' websites, there is often a need to transfer data back and forth between development, staging, and production databases, which are sometimes hosted in separate physical environments. SQL Server's bcp (bulk copy program) utility can be used for such transfers. bcp is essentially a command line utility that can be used to export and import data between databases. It utilizes script files that typically have to be manually written time and again--which can become quite a nuisance. In this article, Mark Hughes introduces an ASP.NET application he has written that generates the necessary scripts on the fly.