Very simple bulk insert inserts NULLs for each row in CSV - tsql

Question

I can hear you saying: Then it ain't so simple, is it.
Here's the table:
CREATE TABLE [bulkimport].[Test](
[Id] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
[Data] [nvarchar](50) NULL,
CONSTRAINT [PK_Test_1] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED
(
[Id] ASC
)WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY]
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
Here's the tsql:
TRUNCATE TABLE bulkimport.Test
BULK INSERT bulkimport.Test
FROM 'D:\Referenzliste_VKnr.csv'
WITH (
FORMATFILE='D:\VKnrImport.xml',
CODEPAGE=28591,
ERRORFILE='D:\VKnrImportError.txt'
)
My Config File looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<BCPFORMAT xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2004/bulkload/format" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<RECORD>
<FIELD ID="1" xsi:type="CharTerm" TERMINATOR="\r\n" COLLATION="SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS" />
</RECORD>
<ROW>
<COLUMN SOURCE="1" NAME="Data" LENGTH="50" xsi:type="SQLNVARCHAR" />
</ROW>
</BCPFORMAT>
and finally, an excerpt from the data:
18
26
34
42
59
67
75
83
91
109
117
125
133
There's a carriage return line feed after each row, leaving one empty line at the end. I get a NULL for each entry in the csv file, using SQL Server 2012.

Answer 1

Your question isn't an exact duplicate of this one (you didn't get any errors) but it's the same problem. As the documentation says:
With an XML format file, you cannot skip a column when you are
importing directly into a table by using a bcp command or a BULK
INSERT statement. However, you can import into all but the last column
of a table. If you have to skip any but the last column, you must
create a view of the target table that contains only the columns
contained in the data file. Then, you can bulk import data from that
file into the view.
In other words, you can only skip the last column in the table when using an XML format file. But you are trying to skip the Id column, which is the first column.
Two solutions are:
Use a non-XML format file
Use OPENROWSET
When I used this non-XML format file, your data loaded fine:
10.0
1
1 SQLCHAR 0 100 "\r\n" 2 Data Latin1_General_CI_AS
But OPENROWSET is more flexible, because you can use the SELECT to re-order the columns or otherwise manipulate the data coming from the flat file.