How to speed up bulk insert to MS SQL Server from CSV using pyodbc

Question

Below is my code that I'd like some help with. I am having to run it over 1,300,000 rows meaning it takes up to 40 minutes to insert ~300,000 rows.

I figure bulk insert is the route to go to speed it up? Or is it because I'm iterating over the rows via for data in reader: portion?

#Opens the prepped csv file
with open (os.path.join(newpath,outfile), 'r') as f:
    #hooks csv reader to file
    reader = csv.reader(f)
    #pulls out the columns (which match the SQL table)
    columns = next(reader)
    #trims any extra spaces
    columns = [x.strip(' ') for x in columns]
    #starts SQL statement
    query = 'bulk insert into SpikeData123({0}) values ({1})'
    #puts column names in SQL query 'query'
    query = query.format(','.join(columns), ','.join('?' * len(columns)))

    print 'Query is: %s' % query
    #starts curser from cnxn (which works)
    cursor = cnxn.cursor()
    #uploads everything by row
    for data in reader:
        cursor.execute(query, data)
        cursor.commit()

I am dynamically picking my column headers on purpose (as I would like to create the most pythonic code possible).

SpikeData123 is the table name.

Answer 1

As noted in a comment to another answer, the T-SQL BULK INSERT command will only work if the file to be imported is on the same machine as the SQL Server instance or is in an SMB/CIFS network location that the SQL Server instance can read. Thus it may not be applicable in the case where the source file is on a remote client.

pyodbc 4.0.19 added a Cursor#fast_executemany feature which may be helpful in that case. fast_executemany is "off" by default, and the following test code ...

cnxn = pyodbc.connect(conn_str, autocommit=True)
crsr = cnxn.cursor()
crsr.execute("TRUNCATE TABLE fast_executemany_test")

sql = "INSERT INTO fast_executemany_test (txtcol) VALUES (?)"
params = [(f'txt{i:06d}',) for i in range(1000)]
t0 = time.time()
crsr.executemany(sql, params)
print(f'{time.time() - t0:.1f} seconds')

... took approximately 22 seconds to execute on my test machine. Simply adding crsr.fast_executemany = True ...

cnxn = pyodbc.connect(conn_str, autocommit=True)
crsr = cnxn.cursor()
crsr.execute("TRUNCATE TABLE fast_executemany_test")

crsr.fast_executemany = True  # new in pyodbc 4.0.19

sql = "INSERT INTO fast_executemany_test (txtcol) VALUES (?)"
params = [(f'txt{i:06d}',) for i in range(1000)]
t0 = time.time()
crsr.executemany(sql, params)
print(f'{time.time() - t0:.1f} seconds')

... reduced the execution time to just over 1 second.