Writing large datasets to SQL Server can be very slow using the DBI package with an odbc connection. The issue with writing data is that individual INSERT statements are generated for each row of data. I’ve also had issues with remote connections that can make large writes to SQL Server take a very long time. SQL Server Management Studio does provide a GUI interface to import data that is much more efficient. For those that want to include the data import in their reproducible R workflows there are a couple of options.
Read on to see how it works. It’s still calling bcp.exe under the covers, so expect similar foibles using it as you would bcp. H/T R-Bloggers.