I have an archiving process that basically deletes archived records after a set number of days. Is it better to write a scheduled SQL job or a windows service to accomplish the deletion? The database is mssql2005.
Update:
To speak to some of the answers below, this question is regarding an in house application and not a distributed product.
It depends on what you want to accomplish.
Do you want to store the deleted archives somewhere? Log the changes? An SQL Job should perform better since it is run directly in the database, but it is easier to give a service acces to resources outside the database. So it depends on what you want to do,,,
I would think a scheduled SQL job would be a safer solution since if the database is migrated to a new machine, someone doing the migration might forget that there is a windows service involved and forget to start/install it on the new server.
In the past we've had a number of SQL Jobs run. Recently, however, we've been moving to calling those processes from .Net code as a client application run from a windows schedule task, for two reasons:
It's easier to implement features like logging this way.
We have other batch jobs that don't run in the database, and therefore must be in windows scheduled tasks. This way all the batch jobs of any type will be listed in one place.
Please note that regardless of how you do it, for this task you do not want a service. Services run all day, and will consume a bit of the server's ram all day.
In this, you have a task you need to run, and run once a day, every day. As such, you'd either want a job in SQL Server or as Joel described an application (console or winforms) that was setup on a schedule to execute and then unload from the server's memory space.
Is this for you/in house, or is this part of a product that you distribute.
If in house, I'd say the SQL job. That's just another service too.
If it's part of a product that you distribute, I would consider how the installation and support will be.
To follow on Corey's point, if this is externally distributed, will you need to support SQL Express? If not, I'd go with the SQL job directly. Otherwise, you'll have to get more creative as SQL Express does not have the SQL Agent that comes with the full versions of SQL 2005 (as well as MSDE). Without the SQL Agent, you'll need another way to automatically fire the job. It could be a windows service, a scheduled task (calling a .NET app, powershell script, VBscript, etc.), or you could try to implement some trigger in SQL Server directly.
Related
I need to collect data from a SQL Server table, format it, and then put it into a different table.
I have access to SQL Server but cannot setup triggers or scheduled jobs.
I can create tables, stored procedures, views and functions.
What can I setup that will automatically collect the data and insert it into a SQL Server table for me?
I would probably create a stored procedure to do this task.
In the stored procedure you can create a CTE or use temp tables (depending on the task) and do all the data manipulation you require and once done, you can use the SELECT INTO statement to move all the data from the temp table into the SQL Server table you need.
https://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_select_into.asp
You can then schedule this stored procedure to run at a time desired by you
A database is just a storage container. It doesn't "do" things automatically all by itself. Even if you did have the access to create triggers, something would have to happen to the table to cause the trigger to fire, typically a CRUD operation on the parent table. And something external needs to happen to initiate that CRUD operation.
When you start talking about automating a process, you're talking about the function of a scheduler program. SQL Server has one built in, the SQL Agent, and depending on your needs you may find that it's appropriate to enlist help from whoever in your organization does have access to it. I've worked in a couple of organizations, though, that only used the SQL Agent to schedule maintenance jobs, while data manipulation jobs were scheduled through an outside resource. The most common one I've run across is Control-M, but there are other players in that market. I even ran across one homemade scheduler protocol that was just built in C#.NET that worked great.
Based on the limitations you lay out in your question, and the comments you've made in response to others, it sounds to me like you need to do socialize your challenge within your organization to find out what their routine mechanism is for setting up data transfers. It's unlikely that this is the first time it's come up, unless the company was founded in the last week or two. It will probably require that you set up your code, probably a stored procedure or maybe an SSIS package, and then work with someone else, perhaps a DBA or a Site Operations team or some such, to get that process automated to fire when you need it to, whether through an Agent job or maybe a file listener.
Well you have two major options, SP and SSIS.
Both of them can be scheduled to run at a given time with a simple Job from the SQL Server Agent. Keep in mind that if you are doing this on a separate server you might need to add the source server as a Linked Server so you can access it from the script.
I've done this approach in the past and it has worked great. Note, for security reasons, I am not able to access the remote server's task scheduler, so I go through the SQL Server Agent:
Run a SQL Server Agent on a schedule of your choice
Use the SQL Server Agent to call an SSIS Package
The SSIS Package then calls an executable which can pull the data you want from your original table, evaluate it, and then insert a formatted version of it, one record at a time. Alternatively, you can simply create a C# script within the SSIS package via a Script Task.
I hope this helps. Please let me know if you need more details.
I have been recently reading about configuring jobs within SQL Server and that they can be configured to do specific tasks.
I recently had issues whereby all the DB indexes where > 75% fragmented and I wondered if there was a way to have SQL Server automatically manage itself.
Now when reading about setting up and configuring jobs it mentions the SQL Server Agent.
In the DB Server I was looking at the SQL Server Agent was switched off.
This made me think that having a "job" to handle the rebuilding/reorganising of indexes may not be great if this agent can simply be disabled...
Is there anything at a DB level which can be configured to do this, or is this still really in the hands of a "DBA"?
So to summarise, my question is, what is the best way to handle rebuilding/reorganising indexes?
A job calling some stored procedures could be your answer.
Automation of this task depends on your DB: volume of data, fragmentation degree, batch updates, etc.
I recommend you to check regularly your index fragmentation, before applying an automatized solution.
Also, you can programmatically check if SQL Server Agent is running.
I have an SQL Azure Database instance which provide data to a windows 8 app. The data in my database should be updated periodically (weekly). Is the any way to make it? I'm thinking of write a app which will run weekly and update the database. But still don't know how to make it run on Window Azure? Please help!
Thank you,
There are a number of ways to achieve this, does the data however need to come from a different source or can it be calculated?
Either way, seeing as you're already knee deep in SQL Azure I would suggest putting your logic into a worker role that can be scheduled to run your updates once a week. This would give you a great opportunity to do calculations and/or fetch data externally.
Azure gives you the flexibility to scale this worker role into numerous instances as well depending on the work load.
Here is a nice intro tutorial on creating a worker role on Azure: link
Write the application and set it to run through your cron job manager on a weekly time schedule. The cron job manager should be provided by your host.
I actually search for a system to do a task every day at a precise time. This task is to delete some entries in the database.
I have a Web Role and a Sql Azure database.
I found some tutorial but nothing very effective and simple.
Can somebody help me ?
Thanks a lot.
Take a lok at this SO post Scheduled Tasks with Sql Azure?.
As of now there is no equivalent of SQL job in SQL server.
If you are open to using a service to do this scheduling of tasks, an alternate solution to purchasing your own worker role is to use Cotega which supports this functionality. For example, you can schedule it to launch stored procedure on regular intervals.
Full disclosure, I work on this service.
Assume I know or am able to learn any adjacent technology/language--what's the best way to go about automating a number of processing/summary SQL scripts?
I have a number of scripts, clean-up (eg, update, delete), processing (eg, joins) and summaries post-processing, that I wrote last month but would like to automate. What's the preferred method(s) of automating the entire process as a series of sequential scripts?
EDIT: All of this is run on MySQL dbs.
Similar to MAW's answer, except I would use a Windows Service instead of a command line app (no GUI), and split out the individual DB scripts into separate tasks within the Service so that they can if necessary be called at different time intervals, log their results separately, and be independently configured.
This depends greatly on your DBMS. In SQL Server there are scheduled jobs which can run any combination of stored procedures/commands on a schedule, similar to Windows scheduled tasks.
Since you've tagged this question with mysql, I'll assume thats what your running.
One way to do this on mysql is:
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/event-feature.html
If all else fails, you can reference all of these scripts in a stored procedure, than create a simple command line program which would connect to that db and call that procedure. Then schedule that program with Windows Task scheduler or similar.