

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) - Use this front-end tool to manage and query SQL Server databases.Express and SQL Server Developer are free versions. Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Express - There are many editions of SQL Server.Microsoft Excel - Excel is helpful to view data from CSV files formatted in columns and rows.Notepad - Notepad is helpful to view CSV file data in its raw form.Windows 10 Home - While I use Windows, some of these tools may work in other operating systems.Here is the list of software that I used for this article: I use a Windows 10 environment and a variety of Microsoft’s tools and others for my software development, database, and data analytics work. It could send notifications, by email or other methods, about its actions.It could perform error-handling functions.The program could cleanse or transform the data following the BULK INSERT.The Python program could ensure that it does not write duplicate data to the destination table.

The Python program could perform process steps before it executes BULK INSERT.

If there are so many ways to get data from a CSV into a SQL Server database, why write a Python program that calls the BULK INSERT utility to load it into a table? Here are some reasons why this might be a helpful approach:
