Import - which way to go about

[BHScripter]

Hello:

I have a table which has been partially populated:

Table:
User - populated
User ID - not populated
Location - partially populated (manually as need arises)
Department - partially populated (manually as need arises)
Department Number - partially populated ("&quot
NT Security - populated
Login - populated

In order to have our NT logins integrate with this software, we had to do our initial import from our NT security set up info through the GUI interface provided by the front end software company.

This works great for the web portal side of things but not so great for populating some of the fields to drill down for other items later on:

Missing info in these fields:
Department
Department #
User ID
Location

I wanted to try and update the table by importing a flat file from out HR database which has the missing fields info. But since, the user name is there but without the rest of the info including the user ID # wasn't sure what method was the best for updating. I looked up the Bulk copy info and that didn't seem right, DTS seemed like it might be a good choice but really I'm not sure.

p.s. I'm trying this on a copy of the info not the real thing.

Thanks in advance,
Brianna

 

[Corran007]

Couple of options ya have. You can import from the file directly to the table. doable but a bit hard. the easiest one is to create a new table that has the info for the flat file. as long as there is at least one table that is unique between them, you could just suck in all the data then run a simple update off the unique keys.

 

[BHScripter]

since the "true" table does not have the user ID (PK)filled in but the user name is (lastname, firstname) Concatenated of all things in the one field (yuck).

I was thinking the best way to compare would be to concatenate the first and last name fields of the data to be imported and match that way. Not ideal but the only common thread.

Also, I want it to fill in the PK and other info if they match exactly how can I have it skip the update if the importing data row doesn't match anything exactly?

Thanks