How to bulk export multiple tables from SQL Server

Maybe you have been in the same situation as I ?

You need to bulk export multiple tables from SQL Server, and can’t find any option in the Import and Export Wizard within SQL Server 2005. At least I couldn’t find any out of the box functionality to do this.

So I went ahead and wrote a small T-SQL script that uses the BCP command utility to perform this desired task.

SET NOCOUNT ON
DECLARE @cmd NVARCHAR(2048)
DECLARE @tableName NVARCHAR(2048)
DECLARE @outPath NVARCHAR(2048)
SET @outPath = 'c:\temp\'
DECLARE tableCursor
CURSOR FOR SELECT [name] FROM sysobjects WHERE type='U' FOR READ ONLY OPEN tableCursor FETCH NEXT FROM tableCursor INTO @tableName; WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN SET @cmd = 'bcp [' + db_name() + ']..' + @tableName + ' out ' +  @outPath + @tableName + '.txt -t"," -T -c -S' + @@servername
  PRINT @cmd
  EXEC master..xp_cmdshell @cmd, NO_OUTPUT
  FETCH NEXT FROM tableCursor INTO @tableName;
END;
CLOSE tableCursor;
DEALLOCATE tableCursor;

If you try to run this on a SQL Server 2005, you may encounter this error:

Msg 15281, Level 16, State 1, Procedure xp_cmdshell, Line 1
SQL Server blocked access to procedure ‘sys.xp_cmdshell’ of component ‘xp_cmdshell’ because this > component
is turned off as part of the security configuration for this server.
A system administrator can enable the use of ‘xp_cmdshell’ by using sp_configure.
For more information about enabling ‘xp_cmdshell’, see “Surface Area Configuration” in SQL Server > Books Online.

In that case you have to unlock the possibility to execute xp_cmdshell usi ng this script:

SQL Script

sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1 GO RECONFIGURE GO sp_configure 'xp_cmdshell', 1 GO RECONFIGURE GO