The limit of 10 GB is reached and different constraints force to circumvent this limit the time that a set of patches can be put in place. An appropriate license is already in place on another server but unfortunately the migration can not be done in a reasonable time. To address the most pressing, we must find the way to override the limit imposed by SQL Server Express. Shrinkage, aliasing, file splitting, index changes, all of these were attempted without success. Suggestions?
Since the 10GB limit is per database you can use the following trick to split the data among several databases. Warning: people with strong DB beliefs please close your eyes now :-)
Move some tables to other database, choosing a set of tables than doesn't break foreign key constraints.
For each table create a view with the same name in the original database like this:
create view TableName as
select * from TheOtherDB..TableName
In this way you use the view as the table and you don't have to change a single query, SQL Server allows INSERT, UPDATEand DELETE on that type of views as if they were a table, but the data is stored in the other DB.
Of course after you migrate to the new server you should move the data back to one database.
Related
I would to copy a SQL Server 2012 database from one server to another with the least amount of manual work and without doing a restore or attach database because I don't have access to the source server or backup files.
I would like to have a copy of all the objects and data. This includes tables with primary (including identity designation) and foreign keys, views, stored procedures, constraints and triggers.
If I use SSMS, I have to use a combination of data imports and scripting the objects. One issue with this is that I have many tables and manually enabling identity inserts is a hassle. Maybe one way is to use a diff tool to do all this work for me if possible or find a way to script the identity properties across the tables.
Is there a simpler more straightforward way to copy a database?
Replication. There are different types. Transactional will keep your copy updated with any changes. Snapshot will not, etc.
Without access to the server, I am not sure what you can do at all?
Dear all, Currently I am just researching how I could handle the change of the collation on the database.
Somebody made an unusual decision to create accent sensitive database for global use... but I am on the way to handle this!
REASON: of changing the collation is that database contains data collected from different countries and as we all know some of cultures have their own letters.
With the respect for the customers, our organization would like to have Accent Insensitive database. That will allow users to request data from the server without any limitations using local characters.
As far as I have find out, there may be an option to drop constraints and etc. change collation and then just to bring everything back. In this case I am afraid if this would be enough to affect already existing data (columns).
Another way, I have found an article in Collation change on 2005 and 2008 server. However, this does not include the 2012 server.
Also I am taking the complexity of this example into consideration as well.
I believe that I am not in an easy phase. But I am hoping to get few advises what would be the best and safest way to handle this.
Thank you for your concerns and assistance.
UPDATE let me add what architecture do we have: The complete system contains 4 databases and more than 1.000 tables in total. So my expectations is that not all of the possible ways may work in an optimal way.
me too i had to deal with a similar issue because of a different reason: ancient databases with an old SQL collation installed ages ago on a SQL6.5 server that has been inplace upgraded for each version from sql 7 to sql 2005 and now should be updated to sql 2012.
why all these inplace upgrades? because the actual collation was the server collation and was so old that is not available during then install process of a recent version (2000+) of sql server...
i decided to drop all that old rubbish so i had to find a way that allowed me to move to a new installation with a windows collation.
i had to exclude the data migration (create a new database and import data) because of the lack of documentation and the huge number of customizations, triggers, hidden rules and so on.
the solution i used (the order matters):
disable automatic statistics generation
script the creation of all foreign keys and then drop them
script unique and primary indexes and then drop them
script all remaining indexes and then drop them
script custom statistics and then drop them
script CHECK and DEFAULT constraints and then drop them
now you can run the ALTER commands needed to change the collation of the columns and change the collation of the database itself.
when done repeat the above in reverse order to rebuild all the needed objects.
it happens that if the database is so old as is mine you may incur in something funny like existing foreign key that references fields with different datatypes.
Changing collation of all existing columns is a real pain. I suggest a side-by-side migration rather than alter each column individually. Create a new database with the desired collation containing only empty tables. Copy data from the old db to the new one using INSERT...SELECT (or the ETL tool of your choice), and then create constraints, indexes, and other database objects.
Consider upvoting the Make it easy to change collation on a database SQL Server feature request.
There are a number of complicated solutions on the internet for inplace collation changes but the simplest (and safest) way we have found is to script out the database, alter the script to create a new db with the collation set at the start and then import the data to the new database.
We achieve this using MS SQL Server 2012 Management Studio in the following way:
Script out all database objects with Tasks -> Generate Scripts -> Script entire Database and all Database objects
Alter the script with the following 2 changes and then run it to create a new database:
a) Change DB name to MY-NEW-DB
b) Under the CREATE DATABASE statement add: ALTER DATABASE [MY-NEW-DB] collate Latin1_General_CS_AS
If desired, use a tool like RG SQL Compare to compare the old and new database to verify all indexes, constraints, types etc were the same and collation on relevant columns only was changed.
Run Tasks->Import Data ensuring 'Enable Identity Insert' checked. All data transferred to the new case sensitive database correctly.
Run DBCC CHECKDB if you wish to check consistency
I’m after a bit of advice on the best way to go about this is SQL server 2008R2 express. I have a number of applications that are in separate databases on the same server. They are all “plugins” that use a central staff/structure list that will be in a separate database. The application is in the process of being migrated from JET.
What I’m looking for is the best way of all the “plugin” databases being able to see the central database and use those tables in standard queries and views etc.
As I’m using express that rules out any replication solution and so far the only option I can think of is to use triggers or a stored procedure to “push” out all the changes to the plugins. The information needs to be populated on a near enough real time basis however the number of changes will be very small maybe up to 100 a day and the biggest table only has about 1000 rows at the moment (the staff names table).
Hopefully that will cover all everything but if anyone needs any more details then just ask
Thanks
Apologies if I've misunderstood, but from your description it sounds like all these databases are hosted on the same instance of SQL Server - it's your mention of replication that makes me uncertain.
Assuming that's the case, you should be able to replace any copies of tables from the central database which are held in the "plugin" databases with views or synonyms which reference the central tables directly, since SQL server allows you to make references between databases on the same server using three-part naming (database_name.schema_name.object_name)
For example, if each plugin db has a table StaffNames, you could replace this with a view by dropping the table, then creating a view:
drop table StaffNames
go
create view StaffNames
as
select * from <centraldbname>.<schema - probably dbo>.StaffNames
go
and your code should continue to work seamlessly, as long as permissions are set up.
Alternatively, you could replace all the references to the shared tables in the plugin databases with three-part name references to the central database, but the view method requires less work.
This involves data replication, kind of:
We have many sites with SQL Express installed, there is an 'audit' database on each site that has one table in 1st normal form (to make life simple :)
Now I need to get this table from each site, and copy the contents (say, with a Date Time Value > 1/1/200 00:00, but this will change obviously) and copy it to a big 'super table' in sql server proper, that also has the primary key as the Site Name (That needs injecting in) and the current primary key from the SQL Express table)
e.g. Many SQL Express DBs with the following table columns
ID, Definition Name, Definition Type, DateTime, Success, NvarChar1, NvarChar2 etc etc etc
And the big super table needs to have:
SiteName, ID, Definition Name, Definition Type, DateTime, Success, NvarChar1, NvarChar2 etc etc etc
Where items in bold are the primary key(s)
Is there a Microsoft (or non MS I suppose) app/tool/thing to manager copying all this data accross already, or do we need to write our own?
Many thanks.
You can use SSIS (which comes with SQL Server) to populate, it can be set up with variables to change the connection string to the various databases. I have one that loops through the whole list and does the same process using three differnt files from three differnt vendors. You could so something simliar to loop through the different site databases. Put the whole list of database you want to copy the audit data from in a table and loop through it changing the connection string each time.
However, why on earth would you want one mega audit table per site? If every table in the database populates the audit table as changes happen, then the audit table eventually becomes a huge problem for performance. Every insert, update and delete has to hit this table and then you are proposing to add an export on top of that. This seems to me to be a guaranteed structure for locking and deadlocks and all sorts of nastiness. Do yourself a favor and limit each audit table to the table it is auditing.
Things to consider:
Linked servers and sp_msforeachdb as part of a do-it-yourself solution.
SQL Server Replication (by Microsoft) (which I believe can pull data from SQL Server Express)
SQL Server Integration Services which can pull data from SQL Server Express instances.
Personally, I would investigate Integration Services first.
Good luck.
You could do this with SymmetricDS. SymmetricDS is open source, web-enabled, database independent, data synchronization/replication software. It uses web and database technologies to replicate tables between relational databases in near real time. The software was designed to scale for a large number of databases, work across low-bandwidth connections, and withstand periods of network outage.
As of right now, however, you would need to implement a custom IDataLoaderFilter extension point (in Java) to add the extra column. The metadata would be available though because your SiteName would be the external_id.
Is it possible to create unclustered indexes in SQL Server 2005 that are not updated as data is changed (insert/delete/udpate) so I can ensure a stable set of data to report on?
Our data is changing frequently an I want to be able to snapshot it at a point with out having a column to show the latest change date/time and only selecting data based on that. Before I perform my analysis, I could update them and use them from that point forward.
I don't think you can tell an index to remain stale. A separate reporting table would be more appropriate solution.
For example, you can load a snapshot into a new reporting table like:
truncate table BigTableSnapshot
select *
from BigTable
into BigTableSnapshot
Alternatively, SQL Server Enterprise Edition allows you to take snapshots of an entire database. That can be very useful for reporting, although it does have a performance impact.
If you have the Enterprise version of SQL2005 you can snapshot the whole database giving you a read-only / static point in time copy of the database to report against.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175158.aspx