How to connect Orion Context Broker with SQL Server - sql-server

Is there any way to send the entities from Orion Context Broker to SQL Server by using docker compose file?
Right now, Orion subscribes to the entities and Quantum Leap notifies the Crate DB when there is a change for those entities. However, Crate DB is not what I want and this is the reason: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Direct-Query-for-PostgreSQL/m-p/776979/highlight/true#M374297
So basically my question is, if there is any way to replace the Crate DB with any of these supported ones: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-directquery-data-sources.
(I randomly chose the SQL Server but any other is fine)

I don't know Quantum Leap or CrateDB but, basically, you could create a Context Consumer to receive notifications from Orion (a subscription would be created for that) so each notification is persisted in your target DB (in this case SQL Server).
In fact, maybe you can take advantage of Cygnus instead of developing that piece of software from scratch. Cygnus is extensible and there is documentation about how to extend it, so new sinks can be developed. You need to develop the sink for SQL Server. Note that there already sinks for other SQL-based databases (MySQL and Postgresql in particular) so they could be a good starting point.
If at the end you develop a new sink, it would be a great contribution to Cygnus catalog of sinks. Please, don't hesitate to send as the pull request in that

Related

How can I establish a connection between my SQL Server 2017 database with a SaaS-based server?

I use a SQL Server 2017 database to perform ad-hoc data analytics activities to support my team. In order to source data from various databases, I either mount a backup on my environment (if the target DB holding the data I’m after is also SQL Server) or use linked servers to establish a direct connection (where I need data from Oracle or iSeries).
More recently though I’m coming across SaaS based systems and was wondering if there’s any way I can establish a direct connection between my database and the SaaS database? I’m not sure whether SSIS packages will do the trick. Any pointers would be gratefully appreciated as I’m struggling to get the right, scalable solution for this problem!
Data integration with SaaS solutions is a mixed bag. You have to discover on a case-by-case basis what integration or data export functionality each SaaS application has. Few will allow any kind of direct database access, but you might find an ETL tool that has pretty broad connectivity.
In Azure you can look at Logic Apps Connectors, and Power Query Connectors. Or products like Boomi. Which have connectors for many popular SaaS Applications.

Approaches for Database Synchronization

I am currently been assigned to develop a sync application for my company. We have SQL server on our database server which will be synced with the client database. Client databases are not known, they can be SQLite or MYSQL or whatever.
What this sync app does is, detect changes that occur on server & client databases. Save these changes and sync. If changes occur on server database it will be synced with the client database and vice versa.
I did some research on it and came to know many solutions. One of them is to use a Microsoft Sync Framework. But I hardly found a good implementation example on it for syncing with remote databases.
Then I came across Change Data Capture(CDC) on SQL Server 2008. CDC works by detecting the change on the source table through triggers and put these changes on a separate table called sync_table, this table is then used for syncing.
Since, I cannot use the CDC feature because I don't have sufficient database rights on my machine, I have started to develop my own solution which works like how CDC does. I create separate sync_table for each source table, create triggers to detect data change and put this data in the sync_table.
However, I am advised to do some more research on it for choosing the best implementation methodology.
I need to keep the following things in mind,
Databases may/may not be on the same network.
On server side, the user must be able to select which tables will take part in the sync process.
Devices that will sync with the server database need to be registered first. Meaning that all client devices will be registered by the user before they can start syncing.
As usual any help will be appreciated :)
There is an open source project called SymmetricDS with many of the same goals. Take a look at the documentation and data model to see how the problem was solved, and maybe you will get some ideas. Instead of a separate shadow table for each source table, there is a single sym_data table where all the data is captured in comma separated value format. The advantage is one place to look for captured data and retrieve changes that were part of the same transaction. The table is kept small by purging it often after data is transferred successfully. It uses web protocols (HTTP) for data transfer. The advantage is leveraging existing web servers for performance, administration, and known filtering through firewalls. There is also a registration protocol used before clients are allowed to sync. The server admin "opens registration" for a client ID, which allows the client to connect for the first time. It supports many different databases, so you'll find examples of how to write triggers and retrieve unique transaction IDs on those systems.

C# How to Synch Data Between Database Instances Over the Internet

We have an application that requires our customers to have a SQL server instance on site. At their request, the application needs to synchronize the data in their database with a copy in our datacenter.
We're using .Net 3.5 SP1. We need to synchronize the data exactly, including IDENTITY columns.
We'd prefer to use something like LINQ to SQL that would let us make some simple select and insert/update calls against mapped entities. However, the IDENTITY columns seem to be a problem with LINQ and similar approaches.
We can do this all with built-up SQL statements and turn IDENTITY INSERT on / off as needed, but I'd prefer a more elegant solution.
Thanks!
** Edit - We DO need to write our own solution, and we do need to use .Net 3.5 SP1 to do it. I won't spend your time explaining all the reasons why, but please limit suggestions to options within the .Net playground.
Microsoft Sync Framework can be your solution. This is framework description from Microsoft:
Microsoft Sync Framework is a data synchronization platform from Microsoft that can be used to synchronize data across multiple data stores. Sync Framework includes a transport-agnostic architecture, into which data store-specific synchronization providers, modelled on the ADO.NET data provider API, can be plugged in.
Sync Framework is a comprehensive data synchronization solution that enables developers to build solutions that support synchronization of any database, on any data protocol over any network topology. msdn.microsoft.com
For your convinience providing link to good tutorial on the subject
If it is just a couple of tables that need to be synchronized and there is not a lot of data in the tables (now and future) you could develop some sort of bulk copy from your servers and bulk insert routine on the customer's server.
Since you said you can't use SQL Server replication services or SSIS, then perhaps a backup/restore procedure could be written. You could take a scheduled backup of your database and make it available to calling applications which could then copy the backup, restore it to another instance on the customers server, then pull all data you need via any number of methods and it would exist locally on the customers servers.
Beyond that, I think you may be asking for a maintenance and synchronization nightmare if you can't base your solution on tools that are made to do this sort of thing.

Microsoft Sync Services - good solution for me?

We upload sales transactions from our stores to the headoffice server. At the moment, we use DTS (SQL Server Data Transformation Services), but we’re planning on replacing that with Microsoft Sync services for ADO.NET, as this seems to be Microsoft’s preferred solution for this type of setup and we want to follow the standard (that will be hopefully be around for a long time).
Here are the details of our setup and what we’re planning. I’m looking for some advice, especially about whether Sync Services fits into our solution.
Situation
Each store has a 3rd party EPOS system which stores sales in a Microsoft Access 2000 database, which we can access. Our headoffice database is SQL Server 2005, but will be upgraded to 2008. The headoffice is not on a VPN with all the stores, but we can open up our firewall to the stores’ IP addresses, so that they can send data directly to SQL Server. The stores are always connected to the internet via ADSL, although they do lose connection and we don’t want to lose sales data.
We are only uploading transactions from the store – definitions do not need to be downloaded.
Current solution
We have written a Windows service that runs on the store PC. This service downloads a DTS package from the server (which contains all the details of the upload) and runs it in the store – and this will upload sales to our server.
We chose DTS, because it is free when you install MSDE. We can’t use SSIS, because that would require a SQL Server licence at every store.
Another reason we chose DTS is that the details of the upload (i.e. which tables and fields to include) are stored on our headoffice server, so if we need to change things we can do that centrally and don’t need to install anything new at the stores. This isn’t a showstopper, but would be nice to have this ability in our new solution.
Potential solution - Microsoft Sync services for ADO.NET
We are currently building a proof of concept with Microsoft Sync services for ADO.NET. The idea is to put SQL CE (SQL Server Compact 3.5) in each store (client) and sync that to the headoffice SQL Server 2005 database (server). We’ll get the data into the SQL CE database either by (1) syncing it with the Access 2000 database or (2) getting the EPOS system developers to write sales straight into the SQL CE database – probably (2). But our main concern is getting the data from the store to the headoffice server. This method seems to be Microsoft’s preferred solution for occasionally connected systems and that is what made us look seriously at Sync Services.
I’m hoping that using this will mean that most of the work needed to upload the sales will be built into Sync Services and we won’t have to re-invent the wheel.
Potential solution - Upload to a custom webservice
There is also the possibility of uploading the sales transactions to a custom web service on our headoffice server and then into our SQL Server database. This means that we will have to build our own mechanism for determining which rows are new, and as well as caching for when the systems are disconnected. Also, we might be missing out on other functionality that will come built into Sync Services.
Please let me know if you have any advice that will help, especially : “Is Sync services the right solution!”. The problem that we are trying to solve seems very generic (uploading sales from stores) – and I’d like to solve it with a generic solution.
Microsoft Sync services is more than you need, but it will certainly do what you want, and it was built with your type of application in mind.
As with most new technologies out of microsoft, (caution: generalization!) you may find that it's not as mature as you might like. It'll do what you need it to, but you may run into issues that aren't easily resolved because it hasn't been put through the ringer. As an early adopter, though, you may find that the Sync developers are eager to help you out when you get stuck, so this isn't as big a problem as it might seem.
Make sure you read through all the literature on it, some of which is here, or linked in the following sites:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sync/default.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sync/bb887608.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Sync_Framework
Given your one-way flow of information, though, and centralized layout I expect you should have few, if any, issues setting it up and using it.
Be sure to report your experience back here!
-Adam

Database trigger that communicates with an external program

I've got a SQLServer Database and an application (.NET) that configures data on that database. On the other hand, I've got an application (VC++) that reads that data from the database and must be 'informed' a soon as possible of any change in the data saved on the database.
I would like to receive a signal from the database engine when some data had been changed by the first app. Of course, I can code some kind of message that comunicates both apps but my question is if exists that mechanism (some kind of ultra-trigger that warns the other app) in SQLServer or in any API for accessing SQLServer (Native, OLE DB, or even ODBC)
PS: Apologize for my english
If your requirements include guaranteed delivery (e.g. no lost events) - you might want to consider an MSMQ based strategy.
Accessing MSMQ from Microsoft SQL Server
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/database/SqlMSMQ.aspx
Microsoft Support Knowledge Base Article: 555070
Posting Message to MSMQ from SQL Server
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555070
You can use a SQL Agent Job that will notify the other app starting it with sp_start_job. Check this out.

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