Azure Data Factory- Referencing Lookup activities in Queries - sql-server

I'm following a tutorial on Azure Data Factory migration from Azure SQL to Blob through pipelines. While most of the concepts make sense, the 'Copy Data' query is a bit confusing. I have a background in writing Oracle SQL, but Azure SQL on ADF is pretty different and I'm struggling to find specific technical documentation, probably because it's not widely adopted yet.
Pipeline configuration shown below:
Query is posted below:
SELECT data_source_table.PersonID,data_source_table.Name,data_source_table.Age,
CT.SYS_CHANGE_VERSION, SYS_CHANGE_OPERATION
FROM data_source_table
RIGHT OUTER JOIN CHANGETABLE(CHANGES data_source_table,
#{activity('LookupLastChangeTrackingVersionActivity').output.firstRow.SYS_CHANGE_VERSION})
AS CT ON data_source_table.PersonID = CT.PersonID
WHERE CT.SYS_CHANGE_VERSION <=
#{activity('LookupCurrentChangeTrackingVersionActivity').output.firstRow.CurrentChangeTrackingVersion}
Output to the sink Blob as a result of the 'Copy Data' query:
2,name2,14,4,U
7,name7,51,3,I
8,name8,31,5,I
9,name9,38,6,I
Couple questions I had:
There's a lot of external referencing from other activities in the 'Copy Data' query like #{activity('...').output.firstRow.CurrentChangeTrackingVersion. Is there a way to know the appropriate syntax to referencing external activities? Can't find any good documentation the syntax, like what .firstRow is or what the changetable output looks like. I can't replicate this query in SSMS, which makes it a bit of a black box for me.
SYS_CHANGE_OPERATION appears in the SELECT with no table name prefix. Is this directly querying from the table in SourceDataset? (It points to data_source_table, which has table tracking enabled) My main confusion stems from how table tracking information is stored in the enabled tables. Is there a way to show all the table's tracked changes in SSMS? I see some documentation on what the return values, but it's hard for me to visualize it without seeing it on the table, so an output query of some return values would be nice.
LookupLastChangeTracking activity queries in all rows from a table (which when I checked, is just one row), but LookupCurrentChangeTracking activity uses a CHANGE_TRACKING function to pull the version of the data sink in table_store_ChangeTracking_version. Why does it use a function when the data sink's version is already recorded in table_store_ChangeTracking_version?
Sorry for the many questions, but I can't find any way to make this learning curve a bit less steep. Any guides or resources would be awesome!

There is an article to get the same thing done from the UI and it will help you understand it better .
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-factory/tutorial-incremental-copy-change-tracking-feature-portal .
1 . These are the Lookup activity ,. very straight forward , please read about them here .
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-factory/control-flow-lookup-activity
2.SYS_CHANGE_OPERATION is a column on data_source_table and so that should be fine . Regarding the details on the how the change tracking (CT) is stored , I am not sure if all the system table are exposed on Azure SQL , but we did had few table on the on-prem version of the SQL which could be queried if needed . But for this exercise I think that will be an over kill .

Related

DB tables technical info in SAP Data Dictionary

I was given a task to develop a report that would present the following details (as separate columns in ALV):
1) Name of the DB table (like MSEG, EKPO etc.)
2) Size of the DB table in megabytes
3) Number of records
4) Number of read requests performed on the table
5) Number of write requests performed on the table
There are DB* tables that contain such kind of info. Specifically I am referring to DB6PMHST and DB6HISTBS. When I try to view them via SE11 or SE16, system reports that these tables do not hold any records. I tried all three development, testing and production landscapes.
Please may you provide a guidance on what I am doing wrong? Maybe there are some other system tables that would contain the necessary info?
P.S. I tried to debug ST04 transaction in order to see the tables from which the report selects data, but wasn't able to find those lines of the source code.
I would deeply appreciate your kind assistance.
P.S.S. Checked the table MSSDBSTATT - it is empty as well (our enterprise uses MS SQL Database)
Go to SE38 and run this report RSTABLESIZE, enter table ID and see the magic.
The number of reads and writes on a table is a subject specific to the type of database (MSSQL) -> please tag your question accordingly.
If you get an answer by an MSSQL expert, which says that the data is stored in some MSSQL tables, then you cannot query those tables using "Open SQL" but you may query them using "native SQL" (i.e. EXEC SQL or ADBC for instance).

Get audit history records of any entity record as per CRM view

I want to display all audit history data as per MS CRM format.
I have imported all records from AuditBase table from CRM to another Database server table.
I want this table records using SQL query in Dynamics CRM format (as per above image).
I have done so far
select
AB.CreatedOn as [Created On],SUB.FullName [Changed By],
Value as Event,ab.AttributeMask [Changed Field],
AB.changeData [Old Value],'' [New Value] from Auditbase AB
inner join StringMap SM on SM.AttributeValue=AB.Action and SM.AttributeName='action'
inner join SystemUserBase SUB on SUB.SystemUserId=AB.UserId
--inner join MetadataSchema.Attribute ar on ab.AttributeMask = ar.ColumnNumber
--INNER JOIN MetadataSchema.Entity en ON ar.EntityId = en.EntityId and en.ObjectTypeCode=AB.ObjectTypeCode
--inner join Contact C on C.ContactId=AB.ObjectId
where objectid='00000000-0000-0000-000-000000000000'
Order by AB.CreatedOn desc
My problem is AttributeMask is a comma separated value that i need to compare with MetadataSchema.Attribute table's columnnumber field. And how to get New value from that entity.
I have already checked this link : Sql query to get data from audit history for opportunity entity, but its not giving me the [New Value].
NOTE : I can not use "RetrieveRecordChangeHistoryResponse", because i need to show these data in external webpage from sql table(Not CRM database).
Well, basically Dynamics CRM does not create this Audit View (the way you see it in CRM) using SQL query, so if you succeed in doing it, Microsoft will probably buy it from you as it would be much faster than the way it's currently handled :)
But really - the way it works currently, SQL is used only for obtaining all relevant Audit view records (without any matching with attributes metadata or whatever) and then, all the parsing and matching with metadata is done in .NET application. The logic is quite complex and there are so many different cases to handle, that I believe that recreating this in SQL would require not just some simple "select" query, but in fact some really complex procedure (and still that might be not enough, because not everything in CRM is kept in database, some things are simply compiled into the libraries of application) and weeks or maybe even months for one person to accomplish (of course that's my opinion, maybe some T-SQL guru will prove me wrong).
So, I would do it differently - use RetrieveRecordChangeHistoryRequest (which was already mentioned in some answers) to get all the Audit Details (already parsed and ready to use) using some kind of .NET application (probably running periodically, or maybe triggered by a plugin in CRM etc.) and put them in some Database in user-friendly format. You can then consume this database with whatever external application you want.
Also I don't understand your comment:
I can not use "RetrieveRecordChangeHistoryResponse", because i need to
show these data in external webpage from sql table(Not CRM database)
What kind of application cannot call external service (you can create a custom service, don't have to use CRM service) to get some data, but can access external database? You should not read from the db directly, better approach would be to prepare a web service returning the audit you want (using CRM SDK under the hood) and calling this service by external application. Unless of course your external app is only capable of reading databases, not running any custom web services...
It is not possible to reconstruct a complete audit history from the AuditBase tables alone. For the current values you still need the tables that are being audited.
The queries you would need to construct are complex and writing them may be avoided in case the RetrieveRecordChangeHistoryRequest is a suitable option as well.
(See also How to get audit record details using FetchXML on SO.)
NOTE
This answer was submitted before the original question was extended stating that the RetrieveRecordChangeHistoryRequest cannot be used.
As I said in comments, Audit table will have old value & new value, but not current value. Current value will be pushed as new value when next update happens.
In your OP query, ab.AttributeMask will return comma "," separated values and AB.changeData will return tilde "~" separated values. Read more
I assume you are fine with "~" separated values as Old Value column, want to show current values of fields in New Value column. This is not going to work when multiple fields are enabled for audit. You have to split the Attribute mask field value into CRM fields from AttributeView using ColumnNumber & get the required result.
I would recommend the below reference blog to start with, once you get the expected result, you can pull the current field value using extra query either in SQL or using C# in front end. But you should concatenate again with "~" for values to maintain the format.
https://marcuscrast.wordpress.com/2012/01/14/dynamics-crm-2011-audit-report-in-ssrs/
Update:
From the above blog, you can tweak the SP query with your fields, then convert the last select statement to 'select into' to create a new table for your storage.
Modify the Stored procedure to fetch the delta based on last run. Configure the sql job & schedule to run every day or so, to populate the table.
Then select & display the data as the way you want. I did the same in PowerBI under 3 days.
Pros/Cons: Obviously this requirement is for reporting purpose. Globally reporting requirements will be mirroring database by replication or other means and won't be interrupting Prod users & Async server by injecting plugins or any On demand Adhoc service calls. Moreover you have access to database & not CRM online. Better not to reinvent the wheel & take forward the available solution. This is my humble opinion & based on a Microsoft internal project implementation.

RevoscaleR for SQL Server to fetch data from views

Hi I am using RevoScaleR package from Revolution Analytics and
I find it quite odd that the functions that are available for sql server objects are very limited .
for example:
RxSqlServerData does not support querying from a view .
I have a view which I have created from multiple tables and I intend to use this view as my source of data and I could not find anything that can solve my purpose in RevoScaleR .
I can very well create another table ( which I dont want to for many reasons) but I am looking for solutions in RevoScaleR space.
I figured this out ,if someone else stumbles upon this ,I guess it would help them(although its highly unlikely ,the documentation ,if consulted,should make this pretty trivial)
Like RxOdbcData ,RxSqlServerData also accepts table parameter and sqlquery parameter .
Now if you want to use a view or a stored Procedure you can exclude the table parameter and use sqlquery parameter .
keep in mind that both can not be used with each other
As #Bg1850 suggested - searching through the Microsoft/RevoScaleR docs is not very easy, but I think I found something here under Section : "Create New Data Sources" .
Basically, you have to set up a channel to your DB and you can use this as the basis to define different data sources ( = complete table or view or result of a SQL query).

Encryption on the fly

here is something interesting that I have been asked. It has to do with the encryption of data in a non encrypted database.
The story has as follows. We have a database, not encrypted and also none column encrypted in any of its tables. Now, we'd like to control the trafic of the data depending on who is asking for this. Let me explain more clear:
We have a table with the name: table1
This table has one column with the name: SName
We'd like to reach the following result. A user connected to the SQL Server Management Studio if runs the following query:
select * from table1
to take no result or if he/she takes a result, this result to be scrambled.
Now from inside the application the table should exchange data from/to the application in the normal mode.
Do you know if there is a setting, or an implementation or an external tool that can provide this functionality?
I think that this is quite interesting case!
Thank you.
Use permissions to stop that person reading the table at all.
Or use a VIEW to hide the table and have a WHERE clause in that that applies a filter silently: this could refer to another table with a list of approved users.
This isn't really an encryption (well, obfuscation in this case) issue.

ADO - Can I edit results of a complex query with multiple join statements?

I'm working on a data conversion utility which can push data from one master database out to a number of different databases. The utility its self will have no knowledge of how data is kept in the destination (table structure), but I would like to provide writing a SQL statement to return data from the destination using a complex SQL query with multiple join statements. As long as the data is in a standardized format that the utility can recognize (field names) in an ADO query.
What I would like to do is then modify the live data in this ADO Query. However, since there are multiple join statements, I'm not sure if it's possible to do this. I know at least with BDE (I've never used BDE), it was very strict and you had to return all fields (*) and such. ADO I know is more flexible, but I don't know quite how flexible in this case.
Is it supposed to be possible to modify data in a TADOQuery in this manner, when the results include fields from different tables? And even if so, suppose I want to append a new record to the end (TADOQuery.Append). Would it append to two different tables?
The actual primary table I'm selecting from has a complimentary table which is joined by the same primary key field, one is a "Small" table (brief info) and the other is a "Detail" table (more info for each record in Small table). So, a typical statement would include something like this:
select ts.record_uid, ts.SomeField, td.SomeOtherField from table_small ts
join table_detail td on td.record_uid = ts.record_uid
There are also a number of other joins to records in other tables, but I'm not worried about appending to those ones. I'm only worried about appending to the "Small" and "Detail" tables - at the same time.
Is such a thing possible in an ADO Query? I'm willing to tweak and modify the SQL statement in any way necessary to make this possible. I have a bad feeling though that it's not possible.
Compatibility:
SQL Server 2000 through 2008 R2
Delphi XE2
Editing these Fields which have no influence on the joins is usually no problem.
Appending is ... you can limit the Append to one of the Tables by
procedure TForm.ADSBeforePost(DataSet: TDataSet);
begin
inherited;
TCustomADODataSet(DataSet).Properties['Unique Table'].Value := 'table_small';
end;
but without an Requery you won't get much further.
The better way will be setting Values by Procedure e.g. in BeforePost, Requery and Abort.
If your View would be persistent you would be able to use INSTEAD OF Triggers
Jerry,
I encountered the same problem on FireBird, and from experience I can tell you that it can be made(up to a small complexity) by using CachedUpdates . A very good resource is this one - http://podgoretsky.com/ftp/Docs/Delphi/D5/dg/11_cache.html. This article has the answers to all your questions.
I have abandoned the original idea of live ADO query updates, as it has become more complex than I can wrap my head around. The scope of the data push project has changed, and therefore this is no longer an issue for me, however still an interesting subject to know.
The new structure of the application consists of attaching multiple "Field Links" on various fields from the original set of data. Each of these links references the original field name and a SQL Statement which is to be executed when that field is being imported. Multiple field links can be on one single field, therefore can execute multiple statements, placing the value in various tables, etc. The end goal was an app which I can easily and repeatedly export a common dataset from an original source to any outside source with different data structures, without having to recompile the app.
However the concept of cached updates was not appealing to me, simply for the fact pointed out in the link in RBA's answer that data can be changed in the database in the mean-time. So I will instead integrate my own method of customizable data pushes.

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