Sometimes it's handy to create a Linked Server to text files in order to perform distributed queries or bulk inserts of flat-file data into SQL Server.
In order to demonstrate this capability with SQL Server 2000, create a text file copy of the Categories table from Northwind database and place the text file named CATEGORIES.TXT in a subdirectory named TEXTFILES on a hard drive attached to the SQL Server machine.
Then add a Linked Server to the text file with a script like this:
exec sp_addlinkedserver NW_TEXT, 'Jet 4.0', 'Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0', 'Z:\TEXTFILES', NULL, 'Text'
Alternatively, you can add a Linked Server in Enterprise Manager:
Step...