Convert SQL dump file to T-SQL
Upload a .sql file and get back a T-SQL SQL script you can load straight into your database. Types are preserved rather than flattened to text. Free, no registration, up to 10MB.
Click to upload or drag and drop
CSV, Excel, SQLite, SQL, DBF (max 10 MB)
How your data is typed in T-SQL
Generated from the converter's own T-SQL type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.
| Your data | T-SQL type |
|---|---|
| Whole number | BIGINT |
| Decimal (money) | DECIMAL(10,2) |
| Floating point | FLOAT |
| True / false | BIT |
| Date | DATE |
| Date and time | DATETIME2 |
| Short text | NVARCHAR(255) |
| Long text | NVARCHAR(MAX) |
| Binary data | VARBINARY(MAX) |
Working from a SQL dump file
A dump is a schema and its data written out by a database's own export tool, in that tool's own flavour of SQL. Which flavour it is has to be established before a single line of it can be parsed correctly.
- →The dialect is decided by scanning the first 5,000 characters for tell-tale syntax: AUTO_INCREMENT or ENGINE= means MySQL, SERIAL means PostgreSQL, IDENTITY( or NVARCHAR means SQL Server.
- →If your dump opens with thousands of characters of comments and SET statements before the first CREATE TABLE, that scan has nothing to go on and falls back to MySQL. Trimming the preamble fixes it.
- →Dump tools often gzip their output. A .sql.gz is not a recognised extension, so decompress it before uploading.
The T-SQL the script actually uses
T-SQL is the language rather than the product, and it is exactly where a generic ANSI SQL script fails against SQL Server. Two of those differences are why this target has a dialect of its own instead of reusing the shared one.
- →Date and timestamp values are written as ordinary quoted strings. The ANSI typed literal - the word DATE in front of a quoted date - is not T-SQL, and the server rejects it, which on its own is enough to make a portable script fail to load.
- →GO is not a statement in the language at all. sqlcmd, SSMS and Azure Data Studio read it as a batch separator and the server never sees it, so a driver handed the whole file as one string chokes on it: run the file through one of those clients, or split the text on its GO lines and send the pieces in order down the same connection.
- →Rows are written 500 to a statement, comfortably under the 1000-row ceiling T-SQL puts on a single VALUES list. That ceiling is what makes a script built around one statement per table fail on any table worth converting.
Reading SQL dump file
- →Parsed with a real SQL parser, not regular expressions, so a value containing a closing parenthesis or a semicolon cannot split a row in half.
- →CREATE TABLE types, primary keys, NOT NULL and AUTO_INCREMENT are all read from the dump.
- →The source dialect is detected from the dump itself — MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQL Server dumps all parse.
Writing T-SQL
- →String literals carry the N prefix, so non-ASCII text survives whatever collation the database uses.
- →Timestamps become DATETIME2. T-SQL’s TIMESTAMP is a row-version counter, not a point in time.
- →Identity columns are wrapped in SET IDENTITY_INSERT so explicit key values load.
- →Statements are separated with GO in batches.
What you get
A ZIP containing dump.sql, plus a README with the exact command to load it. If anything about your data needed a judgement call, a _warnings.txt explains it.
Load this dump into SQL Server:
sqlcmd -S HOST -U USER -P PASSWORD -d DATABASE -i dump.sql
Notes:
- Text columns are NVARCHAR and literals carry the N prefix, so
non-ASCII data survives regardless of database collation.
- Timestamps are DATETIME2. T-SQL's TIMESTAMP type is a row
version, not a point in time.Questions
- Is converting SQL dump file to T-SQL free?
- Yes. Files up to 10MB convert free with no account. There is a limit of five conversions per day per IP address.
- Will my SQL dump file data keep its types in T-SQL?
- Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real T-SQL types rather than everything becoming text. The mapping table above shows exactly what you get.
- Do you store my file?
- No. The file is written to a temporary directory, converted, and the directory is deleted as soon as your download has been sent.