The Bulk Copy Program (BCP) command-line utility is used to move data between an existing database table and file stored in ASCII. Running BCP on the same machine as SQL Server can boost BCP performance as it eliminates network overhead involved in the data transmission.

Because BCP does not run as part of SQL Server, the data is copied first to workstation, which immediately sends it to back to Server to be loaded. NT’s caching and file transfer mechanisms are more efficient than BCP across a network. Therefore, copying the remote data file to the server with NT’s ordinary file copy commands and then running BCP locally is faster. It avoids moving data file around the network twice, once to the BCP client machine and then to the SQL Server.