We have a peculiar challenge with overly-strict use restrictions, and I'm trying to find a way to accomplish it.
We have data in two locations, on different platforms. We are extracting data from application tables, and we aren't allowed to create our own views/procs/etc.
Is there a way to run a query into a remote Oracle DB from within an SQL Server query?
To further complicate issues, we have to make it run through a Crystal Reports database command.
We have ODBC connections defined at the BOXI platform (using Oracle ODBC for the Oracle connection).
I am hoping to use the SQL WITH clause to build in-memory views (for lack of a better term) to:
Initially extract some circuit IDs from the local SQL Server system,
Extract ticket numbers based on those circuit IDs, from the remote Oracle system,
Extract the core of our data from the SQL Server system, joined with the ticket data and return that to Crystal as a result dataset.
If we had our own space, this would be trivial.
BOXI doesn't let us do multiple-server universes.
You would need to some way to write and store connection strings, but it doesn't sound like you're able to do this.
If you can't make ANY changes to either source system, you might try creating an MS Access DB and using linked tables to bring in all the information you need and have your Crystal Report run from that. You would then only need to make sure that the machine you're running this on has the ODBC drivers to be able to connect, which are simple enough to configure.
Related
I am working on migrating an application from one server to the other. According to the connection string of this application, it is touching different databases. Meaning a view query in DB1 will touch a table in DB2. So while migrating this application, I constant get to see chain of 'Database unavailable' errors and every time I see such error, I have to migrate that specific database.
I am wondering, since we have ER diagrams to know about relationships between tables in a database, is there any way in SQL server to know the relationships/linkages between different DATABASES in a server? Are there any tool that does this?
Depending on number of databases you have, here would be a somehow quick way you can find that out (number of required search = number of available databases in the server):
Use 'SQL Search' application of Red-get
(https://www.red-gate.com/dynamic/products/sql-development/sql-search/download)
and search for the other database names one after another by selecting
your database of interest. Select all objects.
If you have metadata oriented design (a Stored Procedure looping through the names of different other Stored Procedures / Functions from different databases which are stored in a table as metadata and executing them with a wrapper Stored Procesure), then you will have make use of SQL Locator software (http://www.sqllocator.com/Downloads.html) to search for database names in SQL Table values.
Both of the above software are free.
You need to have SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio) installed to be able to use this application. After installation, ‘SQL Search’ will be directly available in your SSMS as an add-on.
SQL Locator can be directly used by providing the SQL Server name and your SQL Server credential.
Note:- The above steps will help you find out the referenced databases from a certain database within the same SQL Server. If you need to find out databases from Linked Server (I do not believe your question is asking that anyways), then you will have to smartly utilize the same above tools to find the external server reference by searching the external server name.
I've been handed an interesting question in that an Apple centric user would be keen to run databases on Filemaker Pro and we already have several running on MS SQL.
FM Pro is visually stunning and as a front end to work with customers would look good, but I'm more SQL at heart.
Does anybody use both?
Can you easily run tasks between SQL and FM Pro to update data to FM Pro (say overnight)?
Has anybody made the change from SQL to FM Pro for any purpose and found it to be ok?
Thanks in advance
To expand on user4166144's answer a bit, you can add MS SQL as an external data source to FileMaker using ODBC. (See "Using FileMaker Pro, I want to create a live connection to a MS SQL Server, Oracle or MySQL data source.")
This will let you base layouts on an MS SQL table just as though it was a native FileMaker table. That is, the data will be "live", with no need for over-night copying about.
There are some limitations to ODBC connections, which will probably be irrelevant in your case. Mostly, ODBC data sources in FileMaker don't get all the FileMaker goodies in Manage Database. Tables from ODBC sources are "shadow tables". For example, if you delete a field ("column") in FileMaker, it doesn't get deleted in the SQL database. However, creating, editing, and deleting records all work as normal. You can even add tables from ODBC sources to the relationship graph, which is the primary way that you get data from multiple tables in FileMaker.
FileMaker is a little hard to wrap your head around coming from an SQL background. It's meant for rapid application development, and as such it has certain paradigms in mind. Here are a few things to know that I hope will help:
Every user interface ("Layout") in FileMaker is based on a table occurrence. The body of a layout represents a single record in that table occurrence. Every script, calculation and related piece of data is calculated from the perspective of that single record in that single table occurrence. That is, a layout is a "cursor".
There is no (sane) FileMaker way to do the equivalent of an SQL "OR" when it comes to the Relationship Graph.
FileMaker 12 has two features with very similar names. It has a calculation function "ExecuteSQL", which allows you to run SELECT statements on table occurrences in FileMaker; that includes ODBC sources. It also has a script step called "Execute SQL", which is handy for running arbitrary SQL against an ODBC data source. This latter is probably going to be very useful for you.
It's somewhat hard to get the results of SQL queries onto FileMaker layouts in any kind of elegant way. Generally, you need to write the results to a global field, a global variable, or a regular field. If you want to display tabular data from an SQL query in a decent kind of way, you will need to generate HTML and spit it into data url in a Web Viewer element on a layout (i.e., prefix the HTML with "data:text/html,")
FileMaker, since version 9, includes the ability to connect to a number of SQL databases without resorting to using SQL, including MySQL, SQL Server, and Oracle. This requires installation of the SQL database ODBC driver to connect to a SQL database. SQL databases can be used as data sources in FileMaker’s relationship graph, thus allowing the developer to create new layouts based on the SQL database; create, edit, and delete SQL records via FileMaker layouts and functions; and reference SQL fields in FileMaker calculations and script steps. It is a cross platform relational database application.
Versions from FileMaker Pro 5.5 onwards also have an ODBC interface.
FileMaker 12 introduced a new function, ExecuteSQL, which allows the user to perform an SQL query against the FileMaker database to retrieve data, but not for modification or deletion, or schema changes.
I'm supposed to migrate script and data for an Oracle data warehouse to SQL server. They want to transfer data last, so first I'm converting the existing PLSQL code into TSQL. Is there any way for me to test if the converted TSQL is returning the correct rows on the existing Oracle database?
You can set up a remote link to Oracle from SQL Server. This can be a bit more complicated than you would want. After all, the database hierarchy and naming conventions are different (for instance, SQL Server uses 3-part naming for tables in a database, Oracle uses 2-part naming for tables in a schema).
But, if you just want access to a single table, then this might be reasonable. The basic command to use is sp_addlinkedserver. But there are details. Here is a question with a detailed answer.
As for the porting project, I would suggest that you create sample data on both Oracle and SQL Server and use it to validate the port. Of course, you will have to eventually test on the real data. But being able to build the system using sample data that is safe from production users should facilitate your work.
I have users entering data in SharePoint (Running on SQL Server), but my application to view that data will be an Oracle Apex app running on Oracle, obviously. How do I have the data be pushed into the Oracle db automatically?
First off, are you sure that you need to replicate the data to Oracle? Oracle Heterogeneous Services allows you to create a database link in Oracle that connects to a non-Oracle database using ODBC (assuming you use the Transparent Gateway for ODBC which is free). Your APEX application could then query and report on data that is in SQL Server by issuing queries that run over the database link. Tim Hall has a good article (though it's a bit dated and some of the components have been renamed, the general approach is still the same) on configuring Heterogeneous Services.
If you do need to replicate the data, you can create materialized views in Oracle that query the objects in SQL Server using the database link you created with Heterogeneous Services and schedule those materialized views to refresh on a regular basis. The materialized views will need to do a complete refresh, though, which means that every row will need to be copied from SQL Server to Oracle every time there is a refresh. That generally limits the frequency with which you can realistically have refreshes happen. If you need the data to be replicated to the Oracle database and you need to send incremental changes so that the Oracle side doesn't lag too far behind, you can use Streams from a non-Oracle database to an Oracle database but that involves a lot more work.
In SQL Server you can setup linked servers that allow you to view data from other db's. You might see if Oracle has something similar, if not the same. Alternatively, you could use the sql's integration services to push the data over to an oracle table. Unfortunately I only know how to setup linked servers in SQL Server and I don't have a lot of experience with ssis to tell you how to do that, but those are the first two options I can think of that you might explore further.
Here's a link I found that might be helpful as well: http://www.dba-oracle.com/t_connecting_sql_server_oracle.htm
There's no way to do it "automatically" that I know of that will work across DBMS. ETL tools like Sql Server Integration Services might help but there's going to be a loading delay (as it will have to poll for changes). You could build some update triggers on the SharePoint database tables but that's going to turn into a support nightmare.
I'm working on a legacy project, written for the most part in Delphi 5 before it was upgraded to Delphi 2007. A lot has changed after this upgrade, except the database that's underneath. It still uses MS-Access for data storage.
Now we want to support SQL Server as an alternate database. Still just for single-user situations, although multi-user support will be a feature for the future. And although there won't be many migration problems (see below) when it needs to use a different database, keeping two database structures synchronized is a bit of a problem.
If I would create an SQL script to generate the SQL Server database then I would need a second script to keep the Access database up-to-date too. They don't speak the same dialect. (At least, not for our purposes.) So I need a way to maintain the database structure in a simple way, making sure it can generate both a valid SQL Server database as an Access database. I could write my own tool where I store the database structure inside an XML file, which combined with some smart code and ADOX would generate both database types.
But isn't there already a good tool that can do this?
Note: the application also uses ADO and all queries are just simple select statements. Although it has 50+ tables, there's one root "Document" table and the user selects one of the "documents" in this table. It then collects all records from all tables that are related to this document record and stores them in an in-memory structure. When the user saves the data, it just writes the document record and all changed data back to the database again. Basically, this read/write mechanism of documents is the only database interaction in the whole application. So using a different database is not a big problem.
We will drop the MS-Access database in the future but for now we have 4000 customers using this application. We first need to make sure the whole thing works with SQL Server and we need to continue to maintain the current code. As a result, we will have to support both databases for at least a year.
Take a look at the DB Explorer, there is a trial download too.
OR
Use migration wizard from MS Access to SQL Server
After development in Access (schema changes), use the wizard again.
Use a tool to compare SQL Server schemata.