How to write SQL procedure to insert multiple items at a time from the list?

Question

I am using Linq-to-SQL and in order to generate my linq code I write a stored procedure and drop that proc on my dbml.

I have large list of customers' name & age and I want to write query that allow to insert whole list in one call? Is this possible?

Currently I am inserting one at a time using foreach loop which takes so long to insert thousands of customers. I researched about this but didn't get exact solution.

I am new to Linq-to-SQL and stored procedures, so any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Linq is not the best approach for this task. For massive inserts I'd recommend instead Bulk Insert:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188365.aspx

Answer 2

You could pass in your list as an XML item and parse out the data from that with a SQL join.

// Sample XML format
<customers>
     <customer>
         <name></name>
         <age></age> 
     </customer>
</customers>

You can easily doing using an XElement object (System.Xml.Linq namespace).

You want your stored procedure to take in one parameter then: of datatype xml - you then do your insert based on the value of the nodes associated with it ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188282.aspx )

DECLARE @item xml;
SET @item = 
N'<customers>
  <customer><name>Lorcan</name><age>24</age></customer>
  <customer><name>Robert</name><age>20</age></customer>
</customers>';

INSERT INTO YOUR_TABLE_NAME
SELECT 
T.c.query('name').value('.','varchar(max)') as Name,
T.c.query('age').value('.','int') as Age
FROM @item.nodes('/customers/customer') T(c)

Note that there is still a limit of 1,000 inserts at one time as far as I know.