I am trying to find the best procedure to get data from our SQL server at headquarters to update apps running on local machines in various locations not connected to our network. Our current data and application is in Foxpro where you simply copied the data file, so I am not very familiar with using SQL databases.
The field app uses localdb and users don't save anything to the database. When the app opens it checks a web site to for updates. I tried detaching our HQ .mdf and .ldf, downloading it and overwriting it on the local machine, but localdb would not attach to the new file (same name). I thought localdb closes and detaches when the application closes , but maybe I am wrong. I also wonder if I need the log file since no changes are made and I dont need to rollback anything. I have searched for a good article on this topic but haven't found anything. This must be a fairly common scenario in many companies.
You want to look into using replication, probably snapshot replication. This allows you to distribute on whatever schedule is applicable to send one or more tables, or other objects, to off site sql server instances. You can use Http to send data.
Related
I have been experiencing random connection/handshake problems w/ a hyper server VM running SQL and SSRS
So the network guys suggested building a new VM and trying it there. (Have you tried rebooting? )
I asked that they rename the old server (--> SQLBKUP) and name the new server to the current name (--> SQL) so all my connection strings will continue to work.
Regardless the wisdom of that approach, that is all now done.
All of our applications work. (and the weird handshake issue is gone,joy)
I have reinstalled SSRS and I thought I was home free.
We backed up and restored the ReportServer and ReportServerTemp databases to the new server.
If i try to point to these databases , I keep getting this error
The report server installation is not initialized. (rsReportServerNotActivated) Get Online Help
Any all information I can find about this for 2012 says that the initialization happens automatically when you configure a database.
I tried creating a new database, and presto, everything works fine.
I reconfigured SSRS to point at the old database and I again get the rsReportServerNotActivated error.
I also 'powered down' SQLBKUP in case it was causing some confusion, I cant imagine what that might be, but why not... This did NOT correct the problem.
Any ideas on why the databases that were working on 1 server wont work on the new one?
Searching the interweb for this issue I find two results for 2012 SSRS (many hits for 2005 issues/resolutions )
this article details how the RSExec role should be configured, I have verified that is all correct.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc281308.aspx
this article details the mechanics of various ways to move a database. The back up and restore operations went off w/o a hitch.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms156421.aspx
neither article mentions cleaning up any server names, ip addresses, etc. that might be in a config table. Inspecting the tables in SSMS, I dont see any tables that look like they might need such attention.
I can always recreate the environment, I am aout to that point, at least I will know what I have in front of me. If anyone has any suggestions, i would appreciate it, Im sure I will be up for a while... :-)
tyia
greg
You are getting that error because you haven't moved the old encryption keys to the new server. SSRS uses encryption to secure credentials and connection information. You'll need to get the encryption keys from the old server and restore them to the new one OR if you don't have the keys anymore you can create new ones but you'll need to setup your connection information again.
First backup your old encryption keys:
Start the Reporting Services Configuration Manager, and
then connect to the report server instance you want to configure.
Click Encryption Keys, and then click Back Up.
Type a strong password.
Specify a file to contain the stored key. Reporting Services appends a
.snk file extension to the file. Consider storing the file on a disk
separate from the report server.
Click OK.
Then restore the keys to the new server:
Start the Reporting Services Configuration Manager, and then connect to the report server instance you want to configure.
On the Encryption Keys page, click Restore.
Select the .snk file that contains the back up copy.
Type the password that unlocks the file.
Click OK.
You can also use the rskeymgmt utility, see the MSDN article: Back Up and Restore Reporting Services Encryption Keys.
If you don't have access to the older server you'll need to delete and recreate the encryption keys. Once you delete the keys the server will automatically re-initialize itself and you'll need to re-enter all of the lost encrypted information.
The following things will occur when you delete the encryption keys:
Connection strings in shared data sources are deleted. Users who run reports get the error "The ConnectionString property has not
been initialized." Stored credentials are deleted. Reports and
shared data sources are reconfigured to use prompted credentials.
Reports that are based on models (and require shared data sources configured with stored or no credentials) will not run.
Subscriptions are deactivated.
Steps to delete the keys:
Start the Reporting Services Configuration tool, and then connect to
the report server instance you want to configure.
Click Encryption Keys, and then click Delete. Click OK.
Restart the Report Server Windows service. For a scale-out
deployment, do this on all report server instances.
This is from MSDN - Delete and Re-create Encryption Keys. The article has a lot more useful information.
For more information also read Configure and Manage Encryption Keys
I am using ADO to connect to an access database from an excel spreadsheet using code written in vb. The spreadsheet allows someone to retrieve files stored locally on my machine according to what they enter in certain cells and from interrogating the database. This has worked well which presents the frightening prospect of me now feeling encouraged!...
It is my wish to give a copy of my spreadsheet to people but retain the files and database on my own computer or a dedicated server. ( I do not want the users to be able to access anything other than a view onto the data or the files that I allow them to access). I totally appreciate their are a myriad of alternative technologies that I could and might need to achieve this. But I really am quite a simpleton and would like to be able to simply amend my connection string with something that uses an IP address and similarly with the files. Is this even possible? Can someone advise me where to even start looking for a solution if it is not? I've browsed through stuff on VPN's, application servers, ASP's etc. without even knowing if it is relevant and, as I say, I need the dumbsters solution. I'm happy to read - but what......should I look at VB.net?
A VPN would allow a similar setup to what you have now in as much as your would need to modify the connection string and file paths (to network share paths) but has drawbacks:
Users/you would need to configure a VPN client
Your machine would be the host so would need to be always-on with sufficient bandwidth
Users would be logging on to your machine so you would need to manage access rights/security
This is difficult to scale and a pain in to manage, which is something that is also true of attempting to serve Access content over the internet.
A more standard way to do this would be to:
Get an ASP.NET hosting account with SQL Server support (or set this up on your machine)
Migrate the Access data to SQL Server (which unlike Access is specifically designed to support multiple users over a network)
Update your VBA connection string and make any required changes to your SQL
Create an ASP page that reads the files stored on the server and returns their content
Modify the code you have that loads files from disk to instead query this ASP page over HTTP and read its contents
Retaining Access; you could also create a ASP page that executes queries, reads the data and converts it to XML returned to your spreadsheet for processing.
I have been using MS Access databases via DAO for many years, but feel that I ought to embrace newer techniques.
My main application runs on end user PCs (no server) and uses a shared database that is created and updated on-the-fly. When the application is first run it detects the absence of a database and creates a new empty one.
Any local user running the application is allowed to add or update records in this shared database. We have a couple of other shared databases, that contain templates, regional information, etc., but these are not updated directly by the application.
Updates of the application are released from time to time and each new update checks the main database version and if necessary executes code to bring the database up to the latest specification. This may involve the creation or deletion of tables and/or columns. New copies of the template databases are also included as part of the update.
Our users are not required to be computer-literate and should not need to run any sort of database management software beyond those facilities provided by the application.
It all works very nicely with DAO/Access, but I'm struggling to find how to do it with SQL Express. The databases seem to be squirrelled away in locations that are user-specific and database creation and update seems at best awkward to do by program code alone.
I came across some references "Xcopy deployment" that looks like it could be promising, but there seem to be references to "user instances" that sound suspiciously like something that's not shared. I'd appreciate advice from anyone who has done it.
It sounds to me like you haven't fully absorbed the fundamental difference between the Access Database Engine (ACE/Jet) and SQL Server:
When your users launch your Access application it connects to the Access Database Engine that has been installed on their machine. Their copy of ACE/Jet opens the shared database file (.accdb or .mdb) in the network folder. The various instances of ACE/Jet work together to manage concurrent updates, record locking, and so on. This is sometimes called a "peer-to-peer" or "shared-file" database architecture.
With an application that uses a SQL Server back-end, the copies of your application on each user's machine connect over the network to the same instance of SQL Server (that's why it's called "SQL Server"), and that instance of SQL Server manipulates the database (which is stored on its local hard drive) on behalf of all of the clients. This is called "client-server" or "server-based" database architecture.
Note that for a multi-user database you do not install SQL Server on the client machines, you only install the SQL Server Client components (OleDb and ODBC drivers). SQL Server itself is only installed in one place: the machine that will act as the SQL... Server.
re: "database creation and update seems at best awkward to do by program code alone" -- Not at all, it's just "different". Once again, you pass all of your commands to the SQL Server and it takes care of creating the actual database files. For example, once you've connected to the SQL Server if you tell it to
CREATE DATABASE NewDatabase
it will create the database files (NewDatabase.mdf and NewDatabase_log.LDF) in whatever local folder it uses to store such things, which is usually something like
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.SQLEXPRESS\MSSQL\DATA
on the server machine.
Note that your application never accesses those files directly. In fact it almost certainly cannot do so, and indeed your application does not even care where those files reside or what they are called. Your app simply talks to the SQL Server (e.g. ServerName\SQLEXPRESS) and the server takes care of the details.
Just to update on my progress. Inspired by suggestions here and this article on code project:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/63147/Handling-database-connections-more-easily,
I've created a wrapper for the ADO.NET methods that looks quite similar to the DAO stuff that I am familiar with.
I have a class that I can use just like a DAO Database. It wraps ADO methods like ExecuteReader, ExecuteNonQuery, etc. with overloads that can accept a SQL parameter. This allows me to directly replace DAO Recordsets with readers, OpenRecordset with ExecuteReader and Execute with ExecuteNonQuery.
Each method obtains and releases the connection from its parent class instance. These in turn open or close the underlying connection as required depending on the transaction state, if any. So a connection is held open for method calls that are part of a transaction, but closed immediately for a single call.
This has greatly simplified the migration of my program since much of the donkey work can be done by a simple "find and replace". The remaining issues are then relatively easy to find and sort out.
Thanks, once again to Gord and Maxwell for your advice.
This answer is too long to right down... but go to Microsoft page, there they explain how to make it: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/move-access-data-to-a-sql-server-database-by-using-the-upsizing-wizard-HA010275537.aspx
I hope this help you!!
I am busy developing my own application, it uses a sql server database and it is connected through an entity framework. I use store procedures to insert, update, delete, select from my database.
The app works perfect on my machine even when I publish it. But my problem comes in when I try to install the app to my friend’s computer. It crashes and does not start because it cannot connect to the database.
Is there a way to publish my app with the database, without importing all the tables, store procedures and database into my friend’s pc? I just want to make it so the user just has to install the app and it works.
Your app relies on the db to work, so if you want to put it on your friends PC then you need to make the DB available somewhere, whether it be a local copy or a copy stored on a server somewhere running SQL.
How are you storing your connection string? Is it hard coded in the app or are you utilising the app.config file? To do what you're trying to do you'll need to put the connection string into the app.config file, so you can change it depending on the installation.
either that or
if you want to run your app without data, put a demo flag or something into the app.config file. Put some code into your app to check this value, if it's true then bypass the SQL code and maybe supply some demo data which is hard coded.
Does this make sense?
You could use SQL CE, but you may find it a little more difficult to 'design' your database in it if you are more used to working in SQL Server.
Have you considered SQL Server Express as an option?
On the connection string issue, you can now get the data connection wizard that Microsoft use in Visual Studio via Nuget; this makes adding a way to dynamically configure connection strings on your clients machine much easier.
Lastly, connection strings for the entity framework are different from standard SQL connection strings. Make sure that you clearly understand the differences before you start trying to configure them programmatically. Julie Lerman's excellent book on the Entity Framework explains the differences well.
I need to connect and send/receive information from an MS SQL server in my Lotus Notes app using #formula in realtime (I can connect using an agent, but I need to use inline code for this).
The commands themselves seem pretty straight forward, but setting up the configurations seems to be a topic with scarce documentation. Apparently I need to install an ODBC driver. Where would I find that, and do I install that onto the server or onto the workstations that will run this app?
If any Lotus gurus could step me through setting this up, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
You'll need to install the ODBC driver on the workstations that run this app, if the users will be triggering the ODBC connections. If at all possible, I highly suggest setting this up on the server side, and having it run via an agent. That'll save you from a few headaches, including having to maintain the ODBC connections on each workstation and worrying if each workstation has access to the data and server.
You first just want to make sure your ODBC setup is correct. You'll need the appropriate driver, of course, and the connection information. This site has a walkthrough to give you an idea of how to setup an ODBC database connection
If you have MS Access you can use it to test querying from the ODBC data source. Once you've tested the connection works, you'll just refer to the data source name (DSN) in your #DbColumn, #DbLookup, or #DbCommand formulas.
Back to my suggestion on setting this up on the server side, that would mean you'd keep a copy of the data you're querying within the Notes database itself, and then users would be interacting with read-only data in Notes. You could schedule updates regularly on the server side of that read-only data and effectively create a cache of the data in your Notes environment. Then that data would replicate around to other replicas of the database, but remove the trouble of the ODBC connection being needed everywhere.
If you need realtime data, though, that solution is out the window and you'll have to go with a local solution. In that case, you might want to look at the LCConnection class or using an ADODB.Connection from script, as both will allow you to create DSN-less connections to data sources. You'd then save the trouble of requiring ODBC data sources on each workstation, and only have to worry about whether they can access the server from their workstation.
I would add another option to Ken's list. It involves having the server do the queries of the external database (therefore you are only setting up ODBC in on the server - you don't have to deal with it on the workstations). You create an agent that is launched on the server using the 'run on server' technique. When the workstation needs to query the external data, the code creates a throw-away document in the database, puts the query criteria into the temporary document, saves the document, then calls the 'run on server' agent passing a reference to the temporary document. The server launches the agent, reads the criteria from the temporary document, does the query, and writes the results back to the temporary document. Then the workstation can access the query results from the temporary document. A scheduled agent can delete the temp docs on a regular basis.
It sounds complicated, and it all has to be done in script, but I've done this in many applications and it is fast, flexible, easy to administer, and gives your applications a lot of power. Note that end users must have the ACL rights to create a document in the db (the temp doc) in order for this to work.
Good luck!