Manually inserting varbinary data into SQL Server

Question

We have a SQL Server table for user settings. Originally the settings were domain objects which had been serialized as XML into the table but we recently begun serializing them as binary.

However, as part of our deployment process we statically pre-populate the table with predefined settings for our users. Originally, this was as simple as copying the XML from a customized database and pasting it into an INSERT statement that was ran after the database was built. However, since we've moved to storing the settings as binary data we can't get this to work.

How can we extract binary data from a varbinary column in SQL Server and paste it into a static INSERT script? We only want to use SQL for this, we don't want to use any utilities.

Thanks in advance, Jeremy

Answer 1

You may find it easier to store a template value in a config table somewhere, then read it into a variable and use that variable to fill your inserts:

DECLARE @v varbinary(1000)
SELECT @v = templatesettings from configtable

INSERT INTO usertable VALUES(name, @v, ....)

Answer 2

From SQL Server 2008 onwards you can use Tasks > Generate Scripts and choose to include data. That gives you INSERT statements for all rows in a table which you can modify as needed.

Here's the steps for SQL 2008. Note that the "Script Data" option in SQL 2008 R2 is called "Types of data to script" instead of "Script Data".

Answer 3

I presume you're OK with utilities like Query Analyzer/Mangement Studio?

You can just copy and paste the binary value returned by your select statement (make sure that you are returning sufficient data), and prefix it with "0x" in your script.