As we saw in Chapter 4, a key component of MDS is the web interface that allows you to add, edit, and delete members, attributes, and collections. While this interface is useful, it can be overly time-consuming when you are working with any more than a handful of members. Automating the loading of new and updating of existing records is an essential part of a system that incorporates any form of master data.

Master Data Services supports this automation in two ways:

This chapter will focus on the former method demonstrating how to use T-SQL and the stored procedures built in to MDS to populate the repository. MDS and the API are covered in detail in Chapter 9, Application Programming Interface.