The handover is a .sql file

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The situation

A vendor ships a reference table as a .sql script, a colleague sends a data extract as INSERT statements, or your own export from another machine left a file behind. What you have is text that a database is supposed to swallow, and a database you can reach - but the file is on your laptop and the database is somewhere else.

Some databases' command-line clients can run a local script; some cannot read a file from where you are sitting; some simply are not installed on this machine.

What you do

1. Open the file in FileToDB as a SQL File source. The statements are parsed into tables, not run as one opaque blob.
2. Look at the preview and see which tables the file contains.
3. Connect to the target database, give each source table its destination table, and map the fields.
4. Run. The rows are written over the connection your machine already has.

Because the file is read as data rather than piped to a client, a file written for one engine can still be loaded into another - the values are inserted by FileToDB, which knows how to talk to all of them. A file with several tables in it is one file into many tables.

What it will not do

• It is not a general SQL runner. It is built for the data-carrying statements a script of this kind contains - CREATE TABLE and INSERT. Procedures, triggers, grants, transactions and engine-specific control statements are not executed for you.
• It will not repair a script meant for another dialect beyond the mechanics of loading rows. If the file uses syntax the target cannot insert, the run fails and reports it.
• It creates a table, not a schema. Columns come from the file; indexes, primary keys, constraints and defaults do not.
• Re-running is up to you. There is no "skip what is already there" logic - a second run inserts the rows a second time unless you clear the table or use an update mode.

Related

Several tables in the file: one file into many tables. CSV or Excel instead: file to table. A whole folder at once: folder to table. Doing it repeatedly: sessions, command line. Producing such a file from a database: DBToFile.