How to automatically truncate string when do bulk insert?

Question

I want to insert many rows (constructed from Entity Framework objects) to SQL Server. The problem is, some of string properties have length exceeded length of column in database

Answer 1

Always use a staging/load table for bulk actions.

Then you can process, clean, scrub etc the data before flushing to the real table. This includes, LEFTs, lookups, de-duplications etc

So:

1. Load a staging table with wide columns
2. Flush from staging to "real" table using INSERT realtable (..) SELECT LEFT(..), .. FROM Staging