My boss tasked me with doing research on migrating sql server 2005 to 2014.
my first question is, is it really as easy as restoring into an old backup?
No thing needs to be changed in terms of processes that load to the databases or components that look at the databases?
I'm completely new to this, obviously. I use SQL server management studio almost every day, yet I am still not familiar with anything else besides running a few simple queries.
I've looked at this site here that finds all permissions/access for all users in a database. I've also run sp_who2 and:
SELECT *
FROM
Master..sysprocesses
order by spid
just to get an idea of all the processes going on. How would I see the websites that are pulling from the databases? I know we have a DB loader, how can I see that process?
I can't quite get a grasp of the scope of this project.
It can be as simple as backup and restore or an in-place upgrade, but there are subtle changes with each new edition that mean there's no way to be sure that it will be without thorough testing. There's hundreds of things that may catch you up caused by 10 years and 4 different revisions. Some might be as simple needing to fix SQL Users and SQL Login mapping, to changes to the SQL client causing incompatibility, to functions or methods that simply no longer work or work differently. It's impossible to tell without knowing your data and your database. The first step should be getting the documentation from your application vendor, assuming it's an application with support.
I strongly recommend that you start reading the MSDN doc on installing and upgrading SQL Server 2014, and you may need to read the 2008, 2008 R2, and 2012 doc as well to look for changes that might impact you. I'd strongly recommend setting up a testing environment to make sure that your application will even work.
Bottom line is that you should not assume that it will work without thorough investigation, planning, and testing.
I've a question for you. We have built a software that has a single database for each customer. These databases are managed by SQL Server 2008. Now the problem is that when we build our software we, sometimes, need to change something on the schema (like adding table, modifying existing ones etc) and migrate these updates on all the customers' databases.
Now this task is accomplished by hand: we generate update scripts and then, using T-SQL, we update each database. This is ok for a small set of customer, but we are now becoming bigger and bigger and we really don't know how to face it. We found Wizardby and it seems interesting, but quite difficult for us to learn in this exact moment.
Do you have any other trick?
Thanks a lot,
Marco
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Hello,
I'm new here, so sorry, if my question is too basic. However, maybe you have some advice, example, links, which could help me... I'm trying to find something helpfull for few days, but no results as for now.
I'm working in a distributed environment. I have a Oracle server hundreds of miles away and a MS SQL server close to me. I'm writing a application using Visual Web Developer 2008 Express. I need some data from Oracle. It's not worth to query the Oracle server every time i need some data from it. I'd prefer to run some Oracle queries once each night and store results in some local (SQL Server) tables. I assume, I should run queries through standard windows scheduler (Windows Server 2008). I have the basic connectivity - I can open Oracle Database from local Visual Studio.
The questions are:
How to write a query/procedure/function that would get data from Oracle and put them into a SQL Server table (possibly recreated before each query run)?
How can I run such a query from command line (or in other way run from scheduler)
What naming conventions are applicable? In VS I use something like //IP.IP.IP.IP/Name and a user with password.
Thanks for any help or advice.
Regards,
Matteo
I suggest you speak to the DBA's of the Oracle and SQL Server databases, as there may be other considerations you need to bear in mind. (Data Integrity, Security, ownership etc.)
One route you could follow would be to implement DTS (For older databases) or SSIS (for new versions of SQL Server) processes to copy the data across on the schedule you want. (This is pretty much what they were built for.)
How much data are we talking about?
If there is a small quantity that you need to transfer every day, you can write a stupid fetch and insert script in language of your choice.
You only need to search for better solutions if "sync" would take too much resources.
Thanks...
I'm the DBA for the SQL Server, which will serve only for my application. For Oracle I just want to read data and I have enough privileges and agreement with DBA's. Security, ownership and integrity are not an issue for now. I just need some technical advise how to get data from Oracle to MSSQL tables on a schedule.
I use MS SQL Server 2008 Express SP1. I'm very close to solve my problem - I have established connections and everything installed and working. I just don't know, how to run a query, which would get data from Oracle and put into MSSQL, on regular basis, without manual interaction.
I've some experience in programming, but not much in databases (except creating complex SQl queries). Therefore some example or links to detailed description would be helpful. I'm not sure about naming conventions, differences between procedures, functions and queries, command line options to run db automation procedures and so on. I'm also not sure, about which mechanisms or technologies are available in MS SQL Server 2008 Express edition.
I m using Access 97 database.It has lots of forms. Data bulked. I have to upgrade it quickly. I bought SQL Server 2005 enterprise edition.
I want to use SQL Server for data holder. I m going to use Access forms regularly. I just want to export data to the sql server.
Is it possible to use "Linked" data storing?
While I agree with HLGEMs first paragraph I respectfully disagree with HLGEMs second paragraph. There are quirks you need to know about of which I'm somewhat ignorant. Such as changing boolean fields to LittleInt. But otherwise it's a lot of tedious work to recreate the database schema. And it'll be error prone such as missing indexes or relationships.
There is a tool from the SQL Server group which is a lot better than the Upsizing Wizard especially the Access 97 version.
SQL Server Migration Assistant for Access (SSMA Access)
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/solutions/migration/access/default.mspx
As you discover these quirks you can change the scripts to recreate the database with the appropriate changes.
I concur with Tony Toews (and you should trust him on this, he's an Access guru): use SSMA to help you move data to SQL Server, it does a more complete job than the upsizing Wizard integrated in Access (which doesn't work for upsizing to SQL Server 2008 anyway).
You have to be wary of a few caveat though; I've made a blog post about some of the things you should check out.
The point is that if the original Access database was designed without relying too much on the liberties that Access allows (strange characters in table and column names for instance), then the process will be much easier.
Pay special attention to all the warning and errors reported by SSMA, they are really useful in helping you focus on the issues you must solve.
With regards to performance, moving to SQL Server isn't necessarily going to make things faster.
In some areas it will actually be slower, sometimes much much slower:
Access is pretty good at optimizing certain forms of data access but once the database moves outside of its reach, it doesn't have as much control.
Most things will work fine though.
You will probably have to rewrite a few queries, maybe move them as views on SQL Server instead of keeping them in your Access application.
Little things such as using % instead of * as wildchars in queries using LIKE in their WHERE clause can also cause strange issues like queries not returning any records.
By the way, I'll post a very good resource Tony has on his own website regarding SQL upsizing: My random thoughts on SQL Server Upsizing from Microsoft Access.
There is also a good and detailed read about things to consider when using SQL Server from Access: Optimizing Microsoft Office Access Applications Linked to SQL Server
YOu can add the SQL Server tables to access as linked tables. Then you will want to start looking at your slowest queries and convert them to stored procs.
Do not use the upgrade wizard in Access to create the SQl Server tables becasue it will make poor choices for datatypes. Do the work yourself to create the scripts, choosing the best datatypes. It takes longer this way, but your database will perform better and you will gain a better understanding of how to do things in SQL Server. You should start right now, learning to do everything through a script and never from the GUI. Best to learn good habits in SQL Server from the start.
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We all have our favourite database. If you look objectively at your chosen database, what drawbacks does it have and what could be improved?
The rules:
One reply per drawback with;
a short description of the limitation, followed by;
a more detailed description, an explanation of how it could be done better or an example of another technology that does not have the same limitation.
Do not diss any database that you haven't used extensively. It is easy to take potshots at other technologies but we want to learn form your experience, not your prejudice.
Oracle databases are quite expensive
Oracle does what it does well but the licensing costs are horrendous. That has been improved by the release of Oracle XE but the limitations of that mean that it is a growth constraint on you solution.
Database Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Defect Lack of "INSERT OR UPDATE"
Description
Often you need to either insert or update a record in a table, depending on whether the record is present or not. Not having an atomic operation to do so leads to unnecessary transactions.
This does not happen with MySQL or SQLServer 2008.
Database PostgreSQL
Defect No SQL Profiler
We asked the developers about this at a recent conference and I understand it's now something they're looking to implement.
I love the flexibility of sequences in Oracle as compared with other databases autoincrements, but the inability to set seq.nextval as a default for a pk column is somewhat annoying, and must be trivial to fix.
Database Microsoft SQL Server
Defect Huge licensing cost
Description
SQL Server has great features and it integrates very well with .NET development. The issue is that when you have to scale up from a shared database to a dedicated database, licensing costs are really high. This, in effect, leads to databases which should really run on a dedicated server, being hosted on shared servers with performance and security issues.
This does not happen with MySQL or PostgreSQL.
Database Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Defect Badly implemented UI
Description
SQL Server management studio does not offer a great user experience:
Tabbing behaviour is weird: you are always looking for the right tab
Keeps on crashing on 64-bit versions
Missing some features of preceding version, like overview of grants of stored procedures
This does not happen with version 2000.
Database MySQL
Defect Server will start up with damaged tables
Description
If MySQL has a damaged table - from either being killed during a write or some other failure - it will quite happily start up and allow the user to carry on as if the problem does not exist. Granted it will produce some error messages in the log, but from my experience this doesn't help when you're trying to figure out why an application is behaving oddly.
Most other databases will detect and repair the error on startup or simply refuse to start with any sort of corruption.
Database MySQL 5.0.x and above
Defect Ring replication errors lead to inconsistent data on different nodes
Description
The most serious problem in production we face at the moment is that in a MySQL ring the ring itself produces an error and stops replicating.
Building a ring (or Master-Master-replication) is possible since 5.x.x: You chain the databases in a "ring" so that the replicate data to each other. Every database-node gets all the changes from all other nodes.
We assume that the error lies behind autoincrement- failures. This is known from normal replication, too, but in the new version there are no sufficinet error messages in the error log. I highly recommend not to use this feature in MySQL as long as the problems here are not fixed.
Database Oracle
Defect Did not handle long datatype well for too long
Description
Oracle only had the long datatype until 9i (I believe) at which point it was deprecated in favor of the LOBs. There is a ton of code out there, however, which still has longs and all of the related restrictions. The biggest of which was that each table could only have one long column and it had to be at the end of the columns. See here for a more exhaustive list of restricitons on the long.
Database Oracle
Problem Temp table definitions are not private
Description Many databases (eg Postgres and Sybase) allow you to create temp tables on the fly, insert into them, add indexes if you want, then query from them. Oracle has temp tables, but the temp table definitions exist in a global name space. Therefore the temp table has to be created by a DBA, you need to synchronize between the table definition they used and your code, and if two pieces of code want similar (but not identical) table definitions, they need to use different names. These differences make temp tables far less convenient for developers.
Yes, I understand the benefits for the query optimizer of having global definitions. However for me the lack of convenience makes Oracle's temp tables virtually useless for me, while I use them very intensively in Postgres.
Database: Oracle
Problem: The names of tables, procedures, columns, etc cannot exceed 30 characters. This is infuriating.
Problem: It's slapdash JDBC compliance. For example, stored procedures do not return results sets in a JDBC-compliant way, but instead of a proprietary OUT parameter type. This means you can't use higher-level JDBC abstractions.
Database MySQL
Defect Foreign Keys supported only on some table types
Description
Enough said. It has obvious maintenance implications.
From the MySQL manual
Foreign keys definitions are subject to the following conditions:
Both tables must be InnoDB tables and they must not be TEMPORARY tables.
And here:
For storage engines other than InnoDB, MySQL Server parses the FOREIGN KEY syntax in CREATE TABLE statements, but does not use or store it.
This does not happen with any other major DB.
PostgreSQL doesn't have a good failover solution, but I understand they're working on it.
Database : Sql Compact Edition
Drawback : Stored procedures are not supported.
Regardless of this limitation, this DB has its' uses especially as a client cache for application that can be smart client or distributed to mobile platforms.
Database Oracle
Defect Granularity of grants on packages
Description
You can only grant permissions on packages and not on stored procedures inside packages. Or alternatively, you can grant permissions on single stored procedures but then you put them outside of packages. This requires you to know up front who will use which stored procedure and it is really hard to refactor.
This does not happen with SQL Server.
Database Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Defect Lack of array type parameters
Description
Useful in searches, a lot of times you need to pass a series of values to be matched against. In SQL 2005 you can do a workaround by using CLR inside SQLServer. Given the usefulness it would make more sense to have this feature out of the box.
This does not happen with SQL Server 2008 or Oracle.
Database Postgres
Defect No analytic queries
Description
Analytic queries, introduced by Oracle, are part of the SQL 2003 standard. Unfortunately Postgres hasn't implemented them yet.
Database : PostgreSQL
**Problem : ** is that connector for C# for example are not really up-to-date and crash with advanced feature.
Database: All
Drawback - Poor design by people who didn't think it was important to know what you were doing when you designed a datbase. Far more problmes caused in all databases by bad design than from any missing feature. So I suppose they are all missing the "read my mind and figure out the best solution without me having to think" feature.
Any SQL DBMS
Defect: Duplicate rows
One of the virtues of the relational model is that it represents everything without duplicate tuples, i.e. using relations, which have keys and no duplicates. Unfortunately SQL isn't built that way. This makes the database developer's life needlessly difficult. SQL developers have to deal with tables without keys and debug queries that return duplicate rows.