I am importing data from a third party database. Following various actions carried out on the data by my software application, I then need to automatically produce update and insert scripts to amend / append to the original 3rd party database. There will be in the region of 20 scripts to amend 20 tables.
The live 3rd party database is held remotely of my server which holds a backup of the data only. The data to be amended will be static on the live database during the exercise I am performing.
Does anyone know of an application that will assist in preparing these scripts?
Thanks
Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services was designed for ETL jobs and can help with complicated workflows (lots of dependancies and ordering etc.);
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_Server_Integration_Services
However I personally prefer to simply write SQL scripts and schedule them using SQL Server Agent. If you do wish to use a graphical tool though - SSIS is probably your best bet.
If you want to get clever and dynamically generate these (if the procedure for the 20 tables is standard) you can use BIML to ninja up one package which will work for all tables: https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/3094/introduction-to-business-intelligence-markup-language-biml-for-ssis/
Related
Today I maintain project that has really messy DB that need a lot of refactor and publish on clients machines.
I know that I could add a SQL Server Database project that contains just scripts of the database and creates a .dacpac file that allows me to change clients databases automatically.
Also I know that I could just add an .mdf file to the App_Data or even to Solution_Data folder and have my database there. I suppose that localDb that already exists allows me to startup my solution without SQL Server
And atlast i know that Entity Framework exist with it's own migrations. But i don't want to use it, besouse i can't add and change indexes with it's migrations and i don't have anought flexibility when i need to describe difficult migrations scenarios.
My goals:
Generate migration scripts to clients DB's automaticaly.
Make my solution self-contained, that any new Programmer that came to project don't even need to install SQL Server on his machine.
Be able to update local (development) base in 1-2 clicks.
Be able to move back in history of db changes (I have TFS server)
Be able to have clean (only with dictionaries or lookup tables) db in solution with up to date DB scheme.
Additionally i want to be able to update my DB model (EF or .dbml) automatically or very easy way.
So what I what to ask:
What's a strengths and weaknesses of using this 2 approaches if I want to achive my goals?
Can be that I should use sort of combination of this tools?
Or don't I know about other existing tool from MS?
Is there a way to update my DAL model from this DB?
What's a strengths and weaknesses of using this 2 approaches if I want to achive my goals?
Using a database project allows you to version control all of the database objects. You can publish to various database instances and roll out changes incrementally, rather than having to drop and recreate the database, thus preserving data. These changes can be in the form of a dacpac, a SQL script, or done right through the VS interface. You gain a lot of control over deployments using pre- and post-deployment scripts and publishing profiles. Developers will be required to install SQL Server (the developer/express edition is usually good enough).
LocalDB is a little easier to work with -- you can make your changes directly in the database without having to publish. LocalDB doesn't have a built-in publish process for pushing changes to other instances. No SQL Server installation required.
Use a database project if you need version control for your database objects, if you have multiple users concurrently making changes, or if you have multiple applications that use the same database. Use LocalDB if none of those conditions apply or for small apps that require their own standalone database.
Can be that I should use sort of combination of this tools?
Yes. According to Kevin's comment below, "If the Database Project is set as your startup project, hitting F5 will automatically deploy it to LocalDB. You don't even need a publish profile in this case."
Or don't I know about other existing tool from MS?
Entity Framework's Code First approach comes close.
Is there a way to update my DAL model from this DB?
Entity Framework's POCO generator works well unless you make changes to your DAL classes, then those changes get lost the next time you run the generator.
There is a new tool called SqlSharpener which can generate classes from the SQL files in a database project. I have not used it so I cannot vouch for it but it looks promising.
One way for generating client script for DB changes is to use database modeling tool like ERWin Which have a free community edition. The best way to meet your database version control requirement and easy script generation is Redgate SQL Source Control. Using Redgate tool you will meet the first five goals mentioned. Moreover, you can now update EF Model by single click after changing DB schema (i.e. Database first approach) as required in goal 6.
I do not recommend using LocalDB at all. It always make issues with source control like "DB File is in use and can't commit...” In addition, the developer in the project will not have common set of updated data to work on unless a developer add test data to the database and ask others to get latest version and overwrite their own database Or generate update script by the previous mentioned tool and ask every developer to run it on his localDB.
The best way in your situation is to use SQL Server on network. A master version that all the developers use. Since you have version control on the database using previously mentioned tool, you can rollback any buggy change in the database server.
If you think that RedGate tool is expensive for the budget of your project. A second approach is to generate single SQL file from your database that has all database object and the other developers update the SQL file in source control per their changes. This can be done easily by using schema compare tool in visual studio and appending the generated script to SQL file in the source control. With EF DB First approach, you will not have to add many migration classes as in EF Code first.
Basically I need something to generate SQL Server change scripts for data differences only, based on the data differences between two tables with the same schema.
We will have a table with approx 250,000-330,000 rows and 10-12 columns, and two instances of the table:
The Master table, populated with records from the production system.
the Sandpit table, also populated from the production system - but in which the user can add / remove rows and edit cell contents.
Once the user is happy with their edits they need to generate a change script which makes the necessary changes to an instance of the Master table in a variety of servers (test, pre-prod, prod), so it needs to be reliable. It's safe to assume that all versions of the master data will be the same when the script is eventually run.
They also need to be able to re-run the change script for self-testing (restoring the master back to it's original state would be a separate process, out of scope for this question).
Design of the table schema is not yet done, and can be tailored to suit this purpose.
SQL Server 2008 Standard edition, upgrade likely (but still standard edition).
I understand RedGate is pretty much the industry standard / leading choice for generating SQL change scripts but their website focuses a lot on managing schema changes so not sure if it's appropriate to use here. I'm familiar with using SQL Server myself but it's been a few years - not sure if the inbuilt functionality is up to it or not (both being technically capable + user friendly enough). The end user will be a competent SQL user but comes from the business side not IT (not SQL Admin grade).
You should be able to do this from Visual Studio using SSDT (SQL Server Data Tools). You need to do a data comparison between the source and target tables, which will then generate a change script.
I'm working on a project as an outsourcing developer where i don't have access to testing and production servers only the development environment.
To deploy changes i have to create sql scripts containing the changes to make on each server for the feature i wish to deploy.
Examples:
When i make each change on the database, i save the script to a folder, but sometimes this is not enought because i sent a script to alter a view, but forgot to include new tables that i created in another feature.
Another situation would be changing a table via SSMS GUI and forgot to create a script with the changed or new columns and later have to send a script to update the table in testing.
Since some features can be sent for testing and others straight to production (example: queries to feed excel files) its hard to keep track of what i have to send to each environment.
Since the deployment team just executes the scripts i sent them to update the database, how can i manage/ keep track of changes to sql server database without a compare tool ?
[Edit]
The current tools that i use are SSMS, VS 2008 Professional and TFS 2008.
I can tell you how we at xSQL Software do this using our tools:
deployment team has an automated process that takes a schema snapshot of the staging and production databases and dumps the snapshots nightly on a share that the development team has access to.
every morning the developers have up to date schema snapshots of the production and staging databases available. They use our Schema Compare tool to compare the dev database with the staging/production snapshot and generate the change scripts.
Note: to take the schema snapshot you can either use the Schema Compare tool or our Schema Compare SDK.
I'd say you can have a structural copy of test and production servers as additional development databases and keep in mind to always apply change when you send something.
On these databases you can establish triggers that will capture all DDL events and put them into table with getdate() attached. With that you should be able to handle changes pretty easily and some simple compare will also be easier to apply.
Look into Liquibase specially at the SQL format and see if that gives you what you want. I use it for our database and it's great.
You can store all your objects in separate scripts, but when you do a Liquibase "build" it will generate one SQL script with all your changes in it. The really important part is getting your Liquibase configuration to put the objects in the correct dependency order. That is tables get created before foreign key constraints for one example.
http://www.liquibase.org/
I've been searching the internet for this question:
What are ways to transfer data and tables on a daily basis from an Oracle's Hyperion to SQL Server 2000?
I am an intern at a company and trying to figure out possible ways to do this. Any help or point in the right direction is greatly appreciated
This is going to depend a lot on specifics. Here are just a few possible solutions:
DTS
DTS is packaged with SQL 2000 and is made for this kind of a task. If written correctly, your DTS package can have good error-handling and be rerunnable/reusable.
SSIS
SSIS is actually packaged with SQL 2005 and above, but you can connect it to other databases. It's basically a better version of DTS. (technically it's radically different than DTS, but has a lot of the same functionality)
Linked Servers
From SQL 2000 you should be able to connect directly to your Oracle database as a linked server. In the pros column this kind of direct access can be easy to work with if you don't have any other technical skills such as DTS or SSIS, but it can be complex to get the initial set-up right and there may be security concerns/issues.
Build Your Own
Depending on what other technologies you use you can build your own application to do the ETL (Extract/Transform/Load, which is what you're doing). This could be in .NET, Java, etc. In the pros column you can use something with which you're familiar but there's a big downside here in that most of the low level type of work is already out there in tools like DTS/SSIS, so why reinvent the wheel?
BCP
You can simply extract the data from Oracle as .csv files (or some other format) and then import them back in using SQL Server's Bulk Copy Process. This can be fast, but there aren't many bells and whistles to go with this. If this is a one-time thing with just a few tables though then this is probably the easiest and fastest way to do it.
Third Party Applications
There are a slew of ETL applications already written out there (Data Import, Data Slave, etc.). They will usually provide wizards and one-click solutions (maybe a few more than one click), but they are also going to cost a bit of extra money.
EDIT:
Given your latest comment, I would probably go with a DTS package that's scheduled in SQL Agent to run daily. You can add in error-handling and have the system email/text/call someone if there's ever an issue (or do positive case reporting - ie. send a message when it's successful so that someone knows that there's a problem if they don't get a message each day.
In our company we use ADO.Net for the same task.
We created a source to Oracle , taking all data and then creating it in SQL server
You could write DTS packages to copy the data, and schedule them to run within Sql Server Agent.
See DTS Overview for information on DTS packages.
Here's a tutorial on creating a DTS package: Creating DTS Packages With SQL Server 2000
Oracle Hyperion is a suite of products, largely unrelated to Oracle's database product. I expect you are referring to a product such as Hyperion Financial Management or Hyperion Strategic Finance. These products have APIs that can be consumed using COM Interop or web services. The data can be extracted from the internal multidimensional database by analyzing the database metadata, creating dimension trees, and then using the information to create selections, that represent subcubes within the database; allowing you to get or set cell data.
I don't know what your level of knowledge of multidimensional databases is, but unless it is substantial you may find the task pretty hard. You also need to get a handle on the particular product API.
My company specializes in these kinds of activities, and we have components for this kind of thing. Drop me a line on my blog if you need further advice.
danielvaughan.org
Cheers,
Daniel
I don't know anything about Hyperion, but SQL Server 2000 is very old and may not have a driver to be able to pull data from Hyperion if the version of that is newer than the year 2000. You may need to look to see if there is a way to push the data from Hyperion rather than pull it into SQL Server 2000. One way i have done this is the past is to create pipe delimited text file from the data base that orginally has the data and palce it in a processing directory. I do know that DTS will process a pipe-delimited text file. So if you can't find a driver to process this data directly, consider if you can push it out to file and then process. You wil have to schedule a time gap between the job on Hyperion that creates the file and the DTS package job. But if you are only doing it once a day, that's prbably not a problme.
We have 18 databases that should have identical schemas, but don't. In certain scenarios, a table was added to one, but not the rest. Or, certain stored procedures were required in a handful of databases, but not the others. Or, our DBA forgot to run a script to add views on all of the databases.
What is the best way to keep database schemas in sync?
For legacy fixes/cleanup, there are tools, like SQLCompare, that can generate scripts to sync databases.
For .NET shops running SQL Server, there is also the Visual Studio Database Edition, which can create change scripts for schema changes that can be checked into source control, and automatically built using your CI/build process.
SQL Compare by Red Gate is a great tool for this.
SQLCompare is the best tool that I have used for finding differences between databases and getting them synced.
To keep the databases synced up, you need to have several things in place:
1) You need policies about who can make changes to production. Generally this should only be the DBA (DBA team for larger orgs) and 1 or 2 backaps. The backups should only make changes when the DBA is out, or in an emergency. The backups should NOT be deploying on a regular basis. Set Database rights according to this policy.
2) A process and tools to manage deployment requests. Ideally you will have a development environment, a test environment, and a production environment. Developers should do initial development in the dev environment, and have changes pushed to test and production as appropriate. You will need some way of letting the DBA know when to push changes. I would NOT recommend a process where you holler to the next cube. Large orgs may have a change control committee and changes only get made once a month. Smaller companies may just have the developer request testing, and after testing is passed a request for deployment to production. One smaller company I worked for used Problem Tracker for these requests.
Use whatever works in your situation and budget, just have a process, and have tools that work for that process.
3) You said that sometimes objects only need to go to a handful of databases. With only 18 databases, probably on one server, I would recommend making each Databse match objects exactly. Only 5 DBs need usp_DoSomething? So what? Put it in every databse. This will be much easier to manage. We did it this way on a 6 server system with around 250-300 DBs. There were exceptions, but they were grouped. Databases on server C got this extra set of objects. Databases on Server L got this other set.
4) You said that sometimes the DBA forgets to deploy change scripts to all the DBs. This tells me that s/he needs tools for deploying changes. S/He is probably taking a SQL script, opening it in in Query Analyzer or Manegement Studio (or whatever you use) and manually going to each database and executing the SQL. This is not a good long term (or short term) solution. Red Gate (makers of SQLCompare above) have many great tools. MultiScript looks like it may work for deployment purposes. I worked with a DBA that wrote is own tool in SQL Server 2000 using O-SQl. It would take an SQL file and execute it on each database on the server. He had to execute it on each server, but it beat executing on each DB. I also helped write a VB.net tool that would do the same thing, except it would also go through a list of server, so it only had to be executed once.
5) Source Control. My current team doesn't use source control, and I don't have enough time to tell you how many problems this causes. If you don't have some kind of source control system, get one.
I haven't got enough reputation to comment on the above answer but the pro version of SQL Compare has a scriptable API. Given that you have to replicate stuff to all of these databases you could use this to make an automated job to either generate the change scripts or to validate that the databases are all in sync. It's also not much more expensive than the standard version.
Aside from using database comparison tools, with 18 databases you should have a DBA, so enforce a policy that only the DBA can change tables at the database level by restricting access to CREATE and ALTER to the DBA only. On both your test and live databases. The dev database shouldn't have this, of course! Make the developers who have been creating or altering the schemas willy-nilly go via the DBA.
Create a single source-controlled DDL/SQL script for each release and only use it to update the databases. The diff tools can be useful but mainly for checking that you haven't made a mistake and getting out of trouble when the policies fail. Combine the DDL, SQL, and stored procedure scripts into a single script so that it's not easy to "forget" to run one of the scripts.
We have got a tool called DB Schema Difftective that can compare and sync database schemas. With our other tool, DB MultiRun you can easily deploy generated (sync) scripts to multiple db servers (project based).
I realize this post is old, but TurnKey is correct. If you are a developer working in a team environment, the best way to maintain a database schema for a large application, is to make updates to a Master Schema in what ever source safe you use. Simply write your own Scripting class and your Database will be perfect every time.