How to create temp tables in SQL Server via MS Access

Question

I have an ODBC connection to SQL Server. I need to process data within Access, but it takes too long. My idea is to push this data to a SQL Server temp table and have SQL Server

Answer 1

Brian is correct that you could use a Pass-Through query to create a temporary table in the SQL Server database. I confirmed this by creating the following four pass-through queries in Access:

[ptq1 create temp table]

BEGIN TRY
    DROP TABLE #tblname
END TRY
BEGIN CATCH
    -- do nothing
END CATCH
CREATE TABLE #tblname (intInput int, intResult int);

[ptq2 populate temp table]

INSERT INTO #tblname (intInput) VALUES (1)

[ptq3 do calculations]

UPDATE #tblname SET intResult=intInput*2

[ptq4 retrieve results]

SELECT * FROM #tblname

I can run each of these in succession by double-clicking them in Access' list of saved queries, and the final query returns

intInput  IntResult
--------  ---------
       1          2

The stumbling block here looks like it will be how to get the data from the local Access table into the temporary table. In VBA I tried both

DoCmd.TransferDatabase acLink, "ODBC Database", "ODBC;DSN=myDB", acTable, "#tblname", "sqlTemp"

and

Set tbd = cdb.CreateTableDef("sqlTemp")
tbd.Connect = "ODBC;DSN=myDb;Trusted_Connection=Yes;APP=Microsoft Office 2010;DATABASE=myDb;"
tbd.SourceTableName = "#tblname"
cdb.TableDefs.Append tbd

and both methods failed because they could not "see" the temporary table. (The exact same code worked when I tried to create a link to a "real" table in that same SQL Server database.) I also tried using tbd.OpenRecordset to create a recordset without appending the TableDef to the TableDefs collection and that failed, too.

Without a link to the temporary table it seems that populating it could be problematic. I suppose one could use code like...

Set rst = cdb.OpenRecordset("localTable", dbOpenSnapshot)
Do While Not rst.EOF
    Set qdf = cdb.CreateQueryDef("", "INSERT INTO [#tblname] (intInput) VALUES (" & rst!intInput & ")")
    qdf.Connect = "ODBC;DSN=myDb;Trusted_Connection=Yes;DATABASE=myDb;"
    qdf.ReturnsRecords = False
    qdf.Execute dbFailOnError
    Set qdf = Nothing
    rst.MoveNext
Loop
rst.Close
Set rst = Nothing

... to transfer the data from the local table to the temporary table row-by-row, but that could get pretty tedious for a large number of columns, and it could be rather slow for a large number of rows.

So if I was in your position I would try to make my case for having a "real" table created in the SQL Server database. It certainly would make things a lot simpler.