Is there a way to backup and restore a database without the data. I just want the tables, scheme, stored procedures, etc. without the data.
How to backup the database?
How to restore it in SSMS?
If I'm not mistaken you can do this:
Right click the database
Select Script Database As
Select Create to
Select file
This gives you a script that you can run on a different server to set up the db.
Update:
You probably need to follow the steps here
For SQL Server 2008 is there an out of the box way to backup a singe table? On other database I've seen straightforward backup and restore commands for a single table but have not found it on SQL Server.
I am looking for commands like backup table and restore table which I've come across for other databases.
Use powershell to copy the table from one server/database to another.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2011/05/06/use-powershell-to-copy-a-table-between-two-sql-server-instances.aspx
This uses the sql client library and bulk copy. As long as you have credentials, this can be executed anywhere as long as powershell is installed!
There is one option using SSMS.
Check this out.
We made two backups from a database that needed changes in many tables, one is an exact copy of that database and the other is a BACPAC file.
The new model for the database is ready but I was wondering, how can I copy the contents of the tables we want to recover from the copy of the original database? Is it possible?
I tried using SQL Server Management Studio 2012 but I couldn't find an option that could let me copy from a BACPAC file which is weird because everywhere I look into people is saying that by right click on the name of the database on the Tasks submenu there should be an Import option but there's not such option in it.
Can I copy the contents of a table into another table from a different database? Or is there a way to import the data from the BACPAC file into our modified database?
In SQL Server Management Studio (version 2012 or later), right click on the "Databases" node (not on your database) and choose "Import Data-tier Application" to restore a BACPAC file (or choose "Deploy Data-tier Application" to restore a DACPAC file).
Did you try the following?
Insert into dbA.user.table (a,b,c)
Select a,b,c from dbB.user.table
OR
SELECT a,b,c
INTO dbA.user.table
FROM dbB.user.table
Dumb question - what's the best way to copy instances in an environment where I want to refresh a development server with instances from a production server?
I've done backup-restore, but I've heard detach-copy-attach and one guy even told me he would just copy the datafiles between the filesystems....
Are these the three (or two, the last one sounds kind of suspect) accepted methods?
My understanding is that the second method is faster but requires downtime on the source because of the detach aspect.
Also, in this situation (wanting an exact copy of production on a dev server) what's the accepted practice for transferring logins,etc.? Should I just backup and restore the user databases + master + msdb?
Easiest way is actually a script.
Run this on production:
USE MASTER;
BACKUP DATABASE [MyDatabase]
TO DISK = 'C:\temp\MyDatabase1.bak' -- some writeable folder.
WITH COPY_ONLY
This one command makes a complete backup copy of the database onto a single file, without interfering with production availability or backup schedule, etc.
To restore, just run this on your dev or test SQL Server:
USE MASTER;
RESTORE DATABASE [MyDatabase]
FROM DISK = 'C:\temp\MyDatabase1.bak'
WITH
MOVE 'MyDatabase' TO 'C:\Sql\MyDatabase.mdf', -- or wherever these live on target
MOVE 'MyDatabase_log' TO 'C:\Sql\MyDatabase_log.ldf',
REPLACE, RECOVERY
Then save these scripts on each server. One-click convenience.
Edit:
if you get an error when restoring that the logical names don't match, you can get them like this:
RESTORE FILELISTONLY
FROM disk = 'C:\temp\MyDatabaseName1.bak'
If you use SQL Server logins (not windows authentication) you can run this after restoring each time (on the dev/test machine):
use MyDatabaseName;
sp_change_users_login 'Auto_Fix', 'userloginname', null, 'userpassword';
The fastest way to copy a database is to detach-copy-attach method, but the production users will not have database access while the prod db is detached. You can do something like this if your production DB is for example a Point of Sale system that nobody uses during the night.
If you cannot detach the production db you should use backup and restore.
You will have to create the logins if they are not in the new instance. I do not recommend you to copy the system databases.
You can use the SQL Server Management Studio to create the scripts that create the logins you need. Right click on the login you need to create and select Script Login As / Create.
This will lists the orphaned users:
EXEC sp_change_users_login 'Report'
If you already have a login id and password for this user, fix it by doing:
EXEC sp_change_users_login 'Auto_Fix', 'user'
If you want to create a new login id and password for this user, fix it by doing:
EXEC sp_change_users_login 'Auto_Fix', 'user', 'login', 'password'
UPDATE:
My advice below tells you how to script a DB using SQL Server Management Studio, but the default settings in SSMS miss out all sorts of crucial parts of a database (like indexes and triggers!) for some reason. So, I created my own program to properly script a database including just about every type of DB object you may have added. I recommend using this instead. It's called SQL Server Scripter and it can be found here:
https://bitbucket.org/jez9999/sqlserverscripter
I'm surprised no-one has mentioned this, because it's really useful: you can dump out a database (its schema and data) to a script, using SQL Server Management Studio.
Right-click the database, choose "Tasks | Generate Scripts...", and then select to script specific database objects. Select the ones you want to copy over to the new DB (you probably want to select at least the Tables and Schemas). Then, for the "Set Scripting Options" screen, click "Advanced", scroll down to "Types of data to script" and select "Schema and data". Click OK, and finish generating the script. You'll see that this has now generated a long script for you that creates the database's tables and inserts the data into them! You can then create a new database, and change the USE [DbName] statement at the top of the script to reflect the name of the new database you want to copy the old one to. Run the script and the old database's schema and data will be copied to the new one!
This allows you to do the whole thing from within SQL Server Management studio, and there's no need to touch the file system.
Below is what I do to copy a database from production env to my local env:
Create an empty database in your local sql server
Right click on the new database -> tasks -> import data
In the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard, select product env's servername as data source. And select your new database as the destination data.
Its hard to detach your production dB or other running dB's and deal with that downtime, so I almost always use a Backup / restore method.
If you also want to make sure to keep your login's in sync check out the MS KB article on using the stored proc sp_help_revlogin to do this.
The detach/copy/attach method will take down the database. That's not something you'd want in production.
The backup/restore will only work if you have write permissions to the production server. I work with Amazon RDS and I don't.
The import/export method doesn't really work because of foreign keys - unless you do tables one by one in the order they reference one another. You can do an import/export to a new database. That will copy all the tables and data, but not the foreign keys.
This sounds like a common operation one needs to do with database. Why isn't SQL Server handling this properly? Every time I had to do this it was frustrating.
That being said, the only painless solution I've encountered was Sql Azure Migration Tool which is maintained by the community. It works with SQL Server too.
I run an SP to DROP the table(s) and then use a DTS package to import the most recent production table(s) onto my development box.
Then I go home and come back the following morning. It's not elegant; but it works for me.
If you want to take a copy of a live database, do the Backup/Restore method.
[In SQLS2000, not sure about 2008:] Just keep in mind that if you are using SQL Server accounts in this database, as opposed to Windows accounts, if the master DB is different or out of sync on the development server, the user accounts will not translate when you do the restore. I've heard about an SP to remap them, but I can't remember which one it was.
I've got a backup made using the regular SQL Server 2005 backup command. Is there a way to restore just a single table, not the whole DB?
Restore the whole database to another machine (or temporary database), then copy the table seems like the easiest to me.
This is not natively supported in SSMS but it’s possible using third party tools.
Apart from Red Gate (great tools btw) you can try SQL Diff (restore object) and SQL Data Diff (restore data) from ApexSQL.
Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with ApexSQL but we are their customers and use their tools
The unit of backup and recovery in SQL Server is the database (it is the outer boundary of referential integrity).
Red Gate has some pretty good tools for row-level restore (SQL Data Compare and SQL Backup), but they come at a price.
Detach the current database then restore the database with the date of the tbl you need to a new location (make a sub folder) to put it in keep it separate from your production databases, then restore the database to that sub folder, when completed find the tbl you need and script it to a create script file save to a file, your done with the database delete it then reattached the original one, now scroll down to the tbl you want to restore and script it to a create file (this is a backup only) now delete the tbl, make sure your database is selected and the active one next load the the scripted file you just created with the other database in the query analyzer and run it, it should report successful now check to see if your tbl has been replaced. your done