Next week I will create some simple select queries for PowerBI for a new customer who wants to have more insight in his business.
Until now I have only done this for our own company. I am afraid that by installing SQL Server Management Studio and building some queries in Management Studio I might (in a freak accident scenario) damage his database. I know this is unlikely.
However I do not really want to mess with his configuration. I also do not want to give him any ground to argument against me if anything unrelated does not work afterwards.
What would be a reasonable way to get my queries without really touching his database ? I thought of using a 3rd party frontend like Heidi SQL or FlySpeed SQL (even better because you cannot do admin tasks with it). I cannot just start with PowerBI because I need to analyze his DB first (scroll through tables etc).
Also I thought of making a backup of his DB first but that involves playing around with Management Studio.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
Backup and restore. Then use the backup to work as a development system that way you can work out the bugs then put your app or queries into production.
Check out SSMS ToolsPack. It wont stop you from updating/deleting some rows. But will give you a warning if you are running a update/delete without a where clause. Or if you run a TRUNCATE or DROP TABLE statement. See config for settings. Also has color coding for windows.
Also has Window connection coloring - you can color the query windows based on the server/database name
Related
I am a developer and performance tester but not a DBA. My team is working on a performance testing tool that is specific to our software. One of the features we want it to have is the ability to generate a database report immediately after the test. Our software is database agnostic. For Oracle, I can easily create a snapshot id before and after the test and programmatically create an AWR report for those snapshots, write to a file and save with other artifacts we gather. Works great.
For SQL Server, however, there is no AWR equivalent (that I know of). I know the MDW as part of the SSMS has a UI for getting things like top 10 slow SQL and things like that. But, I have not yet found a way to programmatically create and extract a SQL performance report (preferably similar to Oracle's AWR) for SQL Server.
I am even willing to create the report myself if I can find a way to extract the raw data.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated because searching online is not getting me anywhere.
P.S. I'm trying to do this in Java, by the way, but will accept help in any language. Thanks again!
Good news! In SQL Server 2016, you can use Query Store. This is like your flight recorder blackbox.. finding long running queries and waits. Capture baseline built in to SQL Server. You can compare before and after hardware changes and/or upgrades on queries. Maybe this similar to Oracle AWR.
Only available SQL Server 2016 and up.
I have an ERP system which I maintain with a team of people. However lately we seem to be loosing track of who's changing what and we need a solution to be able to control these changes. We are looking into the enterprise version of GIT as all our software development and web development would work perfectly with it. Not to mention I have some experience with GIT already.
The problem is we need the version control to extend to our SQL Server which we use SQL Server Management Studio to maintain. We have thousands of tables in 6 main databases which have a lot of stored procedures which are being changed.
It's not so much we want to control the source as in, permissions and refuse changes by people. It's more, we need a way of tracking changes and attaching explanations to help our future selves.
Does anyone know any solid solutions which would fit our purpose?
Assume the cost isn't a main factor.
I was using RedGate tool. It can integrate with Git.
RedGate SQL Source Control
I have been asking myself this question once. So I've found following solution which I can suggest you to use.
It is a SQL Server Data Tools that solves the problem.
The tools include SQL server database project for visual studio. This project will store your database structure. You can just add it to you solution. Then run a schema comparison with your database to take a snapshot of your current database state. You can choose what objects to compare. Since this moment your have all your changes being tracked by your VCS. Every change is documented now.
You can make changes in DB project and when you are done just run schema comparison, get the update script and apply those changes to your SQL server database. It is really not that hard to work with your schema from DB project as it provides intellisense, syntax validation. Also it is possible to write and execute SQL queries against you database.
I've never been able to find a good script or plugin for sql server Management Studio (2005 and or 2008) for a very common scripting need: specifying a few/all rows in a table and scripting their insert. You can guess my story: I've got some configuration data in my dev db and I need to script it for deployment to UAT and then production.
I've found a few cludgy systems in the past, that were more trouble than they were worth. I need something free and unobtrusive. Once I find it I'll share it with the other 20 developers in my shop who are annoyed by this. Aren't we all annoyed by this by the way?
What is the best, easiest, free, way to specify a few/all rows in a table and get a script their insert?
Edit
Resolution: SSMS Tools Pack rocks! Just what I was looking for: free, unobtrusive, simple, solid. It's got a lot of other handy additions too that I look forward to exploring.
The SMSS Tools Pack can do this. Sorta.
You can use RedGate Data Compare to compare table(s) across databases. It will generate inserts for you.
Well anytime we add rows to a lookup table in dev, we do it in an insert script which is put into source control like the rest of the project. Then the script is run as part of deployment.
I've been searching for some time for a good solution to implement the idea of managing schema on an SQL Server Compact 3.5 database.
I know of several ways of managing schema on SQL Server Express, SQL Server Standard, SQL Server Enterprise, but the Compact Edition doesn't support the necessary tools required to use the same methodology.
Any suggestions/tips?
I should expand this to say that it is for 100+ clients with wrapperware software. As the system changes, I need to publish update scripts alongside the new binaries to the client. I was looking for a decent method by which to publish this without having to just hand the client a script file and say "Run this in SSMSE". Most clients are not capable of doing such a beast.
A buddy of mine disclosed a partial script on how to handle the SQL Server piece of my task, but never worked on Compact Edition. It looks like I'll be on my own for this.
What I think that I've decided to do, and it's going to need a "geek week" to accomplish, is to write some sort of a tool much like how WiX and NAnt works, so that I can just write an overzealous XML document to handle the work.
If I think that it is worthwhile, I'll publish it on CodePlex and/or The Code Project because I've used both sites a bit to gain better understanding of concepts for jobs I've done in the past, and I think it is probably worthwhile to give back a little.
Edit on 5/3/2010:
If someone is willing to "name" the project, I'll upload the dirty/nasty version that I've written for MS SQL to CodePlex so that maybe we can start hacking out a version of SQL Compact. Although, I think with the next revision of the initial application that I was planning, I'm going to be abandoning SQL Compact and just use XML Files for storage, as the software is being converted from an Installable package to being a Silverlight application. Silverlight just gives a better access strategy.
I am currently looking into Migrator.Net.
This allows you to write changes to your database, called migrations, directly in C#.
These migrations can contain everything from simple table additions/drops, column modifications, to complicated data update code.
When your application boots, it can verify what version the database is currently in and apply any migrations that are required to bring it up to date. All this is handled automatically. The code to run this update is as simple as:
Assembly asm = Assembly.Load("LocalModels.migration");
Migrator m = new Migrator("SqlServerCe", "Data Source=LocalModels.sdf", asm, false);
m.MigrateToLastVersion();
I am having a couple minor issues with the Compact support (it assumes the default schema is dbo). But I don't think it will be too difficult to fix them.
some random thoughts (not sure I can fully answer though)
the Microsoft Sync Framework is one option. I haven't had a chance to fully appreciate what it can do once you've deployed it after the initial first time (which seems to work fine). There's a MSDN site for it here
You can execute scripts on a mobile device, but not through something like SQL Management Studio, so in theory you could manage/maintain T-SQL scripts but the down side is that the T-SQL would be convoluted (to CE's supported statements) and I don't know a way to "automate" execution - but the Sync Framework might hold some answers..
If one of your key criteria is going to be working efficiently over a small pipe, the only real choice you have is to store a DB Schema Version (maybe somehow tied to the scripts checked into your CMS) and when an update is needed, the change scripts are sent over the wire and applied in order. You would probably want to keep a log in your DB as well of these scripts being applied so you can gracefully handle disconnects, reboots and other potentially nasty problems.
Is SQL Server Management Studio any use for you?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms172933.aspx
So recently on a project I'm working on, we've been struggling to keep a solution's code base and the associated database schema in synch (Database = SQL Server 2008).
Database changes occur fairly regularly (adding columns, constraints, relationships, etc) and as a result it's not uncommon for people to do a 'Get Latest' from source control and
find that they also need to rebuild the database as well (and sometimes they forget to do the latter).
We're not using VSTS: Database Edition (DataDude) but the standard Visual Studio database project with a script (batch file) which tears down and recreates the database from T-SQL scripts. The solution is a .Net & ASP.net solution with LINQ to SQL underlying as the ORM.
Anyone have ideas on an approach to take (automated or not) which would keep everyone up to date with the latest database schema?
Continuous integration with MSBuild is an option, but only helps pick up any breaking changes committed, it doesn't really help in the scenario I highlighted above.
We are using Team Foundation Server, if that helps..
We try to work forward from the creation scripts.
i.e a change to the database is not authorised unless the script has been tested and checked into source control.
But this assumes that the database team is integrated with your app team which is usually not the case in a large project...
(I was tempted to answer this "with great difficulty")
EDIT: Tools won't help you if your process isn't right.
Ok although its not the entire solution, you should include an assertion in the Application code that links up to the database to assert the correct schema is being used, that way at least it becomes obvious, and you avoid silent bugs and people complaining that stuff went crazy all of the sudden.
As for the schema version, you could use some database specific functionality if available, but i personally prefer to declare a schema version table and keep the version number in there, that way its portable and can be checked with a simple select statement
have a look at DB Ghost - you can create a dbp using the scripter in seconds and then manage all your database code with the change manager. www.dbghost.com
This is exactly what DB Ghost was designed to handle.
We basically do things the way you are, with the generation script checked into source control as well. I'm the designated database master so all changes to the script itself are done through me. People send me scripts of the changes they have made, I update my master copy of the schema, run a generate scripts (SSMS) to produce the new DB script, and then check it in. I keep my copy of the code current with any changes that are being made elsewhere. We're a small shop so this works pretty well for us. I realize that it probably doesn't scale.
If you are not using Visual Studio Database Professional Edition, then you will need another tool that can break the database down into its elemental pieces so that they are managable and changeable in an easier manner.
I'd recommend seriously considering Redgate's SQL tools if you want to maintain sanity over all your database changes and updates.
SQL Packager
SQL Multi Script
SQL Refactor
Use a tool like RedGate SQL Compare to generate the change schema between any given version of the database. You can then check that file into source code control
Have a look at this question: dynamic patching of databases. I think it's similar enough to your problem to be helpful.
My solution to this problem is simple. Define everything as XML, and make sure that both the database, the ORM and the UI are generated from this XML, no exceptions. That way, you can use code generation tools to quickly regenerate the database creation script, which will alter your schema while (hopefully) preserving some data. It takes some effort to do, but the net result is well worth it.