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I am working on an application which will run on 5 different machine. Data of each machine will be stored on the same machine. I have to sync data of all machine with a centralized database. I am unable to find answer to this question: What will be the best approach for this?
On Each machine a schedule sql job will sync the data with centralized server
Server will request each machine to sync the data
Kindly advice with advantages and disadvantages.
You can configure sql server to use replication and publish a replica to each of the 5 machines.
You have to evaluate if you need all changes in all machines if yes you need merge replication, they have other structures and options such as filters to only have specific data in your remote machines.
Microsoft has solved this problem for you - they have developed the Sync framework. I used this around 4 years ago, and it was rather good - but as #Juan says in his comment, it's now no longer actively developed by Microsoft, and the Open Source version seems to be pretty quiet.
There are two obvious options.
You can use (merge) replication if you want to solve this as a database issue. This is the simplest solution - replication simply copies the data from your clients to the target database, and Microsoft deals with all the scheduling, conflict resolution etc.
However, often there is some data or business logic between the clients - a common problem is that there may be a conflict between primary keys or lookup values between your clients. For instance, if you're using integers for your primary keys, and machine 1 and machine 2 both assign "1000" as the primary key for a record in the "sales" table, replication becomes tricky.
Another common scenario is that there is some business logic that must be enforced which is simple on a single machine, but hard when dealing with multiple occasionally connected machines. For instance, if a customer places an order, the application may want to check that the total order value doesn't exceed the customer's credit limit - but what if there is another transaction pending on a separate client?
In those cases, you may want to create a service-oriented synchronization design.
Microsoft provided WCF for this. Whilst more flexible, it's probably much more effort to implement. In this model, you probably treat the local database on your clients as a cache, and you push messages to the central machine to reflect user interaction.
I have a client who wants to develop an application using Access 2007. For the stated short term purposes, Access 2007 fits their specification:
approx 30K master records
6 or fewer users
department file server
The issue is that the client is very technically naive and isn't at all aware of the trouble they might get into if the scope increases. The application will be storing master data that will be uploaded into an enterprise system and I fear that six months from now I'll be hearing any of the following issues:
we need to keep all of the historical data (suddenly we have 3M rows)
we need fine grained and airtight user level security
we keep getting corrupt data records
our database wasn't backed up for three months (because a user kept it open)
I've done a few small Access databases but I'm a SQL server dev by trade and I know how to use it to solve most any problem. I don't know if my client should be worried about their choice of technology - and if they should, I'm not 100% sure how best to communicate the risks to them.
I fear that six months from now I'll be hearing any of the following issues:
we need to keep all of the historical data (suddenly we have 3M
rows)
Three million rows isn't necessarily a deal-breaker for a Jet/ACE data store. Depends on amount of data in each of those rows.
we need fine grained and airtight user level security
This is a compelling reason to move data storage to client-server db.
we keep getting corrupt data records
That should almost never happen with a proper Access implementation, contrary to claims by Access bigots. It will happen if you're running across an unreliable network. But, if that's your client's situation, you should either fix the network problems or ditch Access for data storage.
our database wasn't backed up for three months (because a user kept
it open)
You can build on Arvin Meyer's KickEmOff approach. But with <= 6 users currently, it might be easier to deal with the situation without code for now. Just ask them to close out long enough for the backup. You could have your automated backup routine create a notice when its attempt fails, so this shouldn't have to be a constant thing.
In any case, suggest you design the current application so that an eventual migration to SQL Server will be less troublesome. Avoid Access-specific features: hyperlink data type; lookup fields; multi-value fields; attachment fields; and so forth. Since you're experienced with SQL Server, it should be fairly easy to create a test SQL Server database and link a copy of your Access front-end to it. Test periodically as you develop the Access front-end. Then you look like a hero when the client recognizes a need to move the data storage to SQL Server.
I'm in a mixed Sql/Access dev shop and understand your concerns, but the sheer usability of Access often wins out for users. Where we have mission critical data and need to use Access we simply used Linked tables - best of both worlds, Sql handles Security, Backups etc and Access provides the front end.
To me, the obvious answer is to develop an Access front end to an Access back end for the initial implementation, but doing the development with upsizing the back end to SQL Server in mind.
That means just applying commonsense to what you do, as #HansUp suggests (i.e., not using Access-specific functionality), and designing your data retrieval so that it will work well with a server back end.
If, on the other hand, either the increased amount of data or the security issues are actually not just remote possibilities but likely to become issues during the lifetime of the app, I'd go with a SQL Server back end from the beginning. But your description of the situation really doesn't sound like that's the case at all.
Certainly the corruption and backup concerns are completely misplaced. Proper maintenance and backup has to be in place, and the operating environment has to be stable, but all of that applies to any database engine, not just to Jet/ACE.
Explain to your client that you will have to charge much more money to create, implement, maintain, repair and later upsize the application. Explain that they will not save money in the long run and that they will be better off if they go ahead and allow you to properly prepare now. That being said, I agree with #HansUp suggestions. You can give the customer what they want and still prepare for the likely eventualities. Think of it as job security.
There are Price and GUI advantages to using Access over SQL that for the non-technical people are really attractive. I think given your scenario then maybe the "customer" is right - aren't they always!
However, your 4 "following issues" really answer your own question.
If your user is technically naive then there is not much point in using technical language. If at all possible when l speak to users the language and terms I used are the same my users understand. Also compliment your users when possible it makes them feel good and make you look good in their eyes. Here's some suggested ideas.
Using Access 2007 is an excellent idea, easy to develop with and change to met your needs. However there are a number of very strong technical reasons for using another free tool, namely SQL express to store the data.
Why use SQL express?
Its free !
Security of the data will be a very high priority (even if client has not mentioned this use this as a reason). Point out how easy it would be to steal all the data from Access compared to SQL server. See this book for excellent detail regarding Access security. The user level security for SQL server is much simpler and easier with SQL server, and will cost less money to implement, as well as being more secure.
Backing up of data. In order to back up the access database no one can be using the database or even connected to the database. With SQL server can back it up at any time. Less down time or in other words greater productivity using this other FREE tool.
Data corruption. One issue with Access database, is corruption of the database. What does this mean? It is possible to lose up to a days worth of work, with SQL server this issue is much very much less likely to occur. There are even situations where it is not possible to recover the database. Hence this loss of productivity can be minimised if using SQL server.
When this tool gains greater recognition and other departments wish to use it, as no doubt it will. Moving to a larger enterprise database system will be much easier and less costly to develop, if you use SQL server express as the data store.
The above are just suggestions, based on the assumption you user is wishing to expend as little money as possible, and the limitations / resources you put in your posting.
I also appreciate that not every one will agree with what l have put in the suggestions above. They are not meant as detailed technical points, more as suggested ways of persuading a technically naive client to consider using SQL server express as the back end db for an Access db used for a departmental application
It seems like the goal of a lot of ORM tools and custom data access layers (DAO pattern, etc.) is to abstract the database to the point where you could supposedly swap out the entire database system with minimal work.
Following the common DAL patterns is usually a good idea in code, but it seems like it would never be minimal work to swap out a database. (Cost, training, data migration, etc.)
Does anyone have any experience with swapping out one database for another in a large system, and dealing with the implications in code? Is it worth it to worry about abstracting the actual database from your code?
Question 1: Does anyone have any experience with
swapping out one database for another
in a large system, and dealing with
the implications in code?
Yes we tried it. Our customer is using a large MS Access based Delphi client server application. After about five years we considered switching to SQL Server. We analyzed the problem and concluded that swapping the database would be very costly and provide only a few advantages. Customer decided not to swap the database. The application is still running fine and the customer is still happy.
Note that:
MS Access is only being used for data storage and report generation.
The server application ensures that MS Access is only being accessed on the server. Normal multi-user MS Access applications will transfer large chunks of the Access database over the network - resulting in slow and unreliable database functionality. This is not the case for this application. Client <> Server <> MS Access. Only the server application communicates with the MS Access database. Actually the Server has exclusive access to the MS Access database. No other computer can open to the MS Access database. Conclusion: MS Access is being used as a true RDBMS, Relational DataBase Management System - please no flaming about MS Access being inferior and unstable - it has been running fine for more than 10 years.
The most important issues you will have to consider:
SQL statements: (SELECT, UPDATE, DELETE, INSERT, CREATE TABLE) and make sure they would be compatible with the SQL database. It's amazing how much all the RDBMS differ in the details (date formats, number formats, search formats, string formats, join syntax, create table syntax, stored procedures, user defined functions, (auto) primary keys, etc.)
Report generation: Depending on your database you might be using a different reporting tool. Our customer has over 200 complex reports. Converting all these reports is very time consuming.
Performance: all RDBMS have different performances in different environments. Normally performance optimalisations are very much RDBMS dependent.
Costs: the costs of tools, developers, server and user licenses varies greatly. It ranges from free to very expensive. Free does not mean cheap and expensive does not always equate to good. A cost/value comparison will have to be made.
Experience: making the best use of your RDBMS requires experience. If you have to develop for an "unknown" RDBMS your productivity will suffer.
Question 2: Is it worth it to worry about
abstracting the actual database from
your code?
Yes. In an ideal world, swapping a database would just be adjusting the data connection string. In the real world this is not possible because all databases are different. They all have tables and SQL support but the differences are in the details. If you can keep the differences of the databases shielded through abstraction - please do so. Make a list of the databases you need to support. Check the selected database systems for the differences. Provide centralized code to handle the differences. Support one RDBMS and provide stubs for future support of other RDBMS.
I disagree that the purpose is to be able to swap out databases, and I think you are correct in showing some suspicion about ORMs leading towards that goal.
However, I would still use an ORM, as it abstracts away the details of data access. Isn't this the goal of object oriented programming? Keep your concerns separated.
I think the primary use case for database abstraction (via ORM tools) is to be able to ship a product that works with multiple database brands. I believe it's a rarer occurrence for a company to switch between database vendors, but that's still one of the use cases.
I've worked jobs where we started out using MySQL for monetary reasons (think a startup) and, one we started making money, wanted to switch to Oracle. We didn't end up making the switch, but it was nice to have the option.
Still, ORM tools are not a completely leak-less abstractions and I know our migration still would have been painful and costly. It totally depends on what you are building, but it has been my experience that -- for performance reasons, usually -- you end up either working around your ORM solution or exploiting vendor-specific features at some point.
The only time I've seen a database switch was from HSQL during early development to Oracle as the project progressed. The ORM made this easy.
I often use the DAO pattern to swap out data services (from a database to web service or to swap a web service to a test stub).
For ORM I don't think the goal is to enable you to switch databases - it is to hide you from the complexities of different database implementations and removing the need to worry about the fine details of translating from relational to object represenations of your data.
By having someone smart write an ORM that handles caching, only updates fields that have changed, groups updates, etc I don't need to. Although in the cases where I need something special I can still revert to SQL if I want.
Is it possible to configure multiple database servers (all hosting the same database) to execute a single query simultaneously?
I'm not asking about executing queries using multiple CPUs simultaneously - I know this it possible.
UPDATE
What I mean is something like this:
There are two 2 servers: Server1 and Server2
Both server host database Foo and both instances of Foo are identical
I connect to Server1 and submit a complicated (lots of joins, many calculations) query
Server1 decides that some calculations should be made on Server2 and some data should be read from that server, too - appropriate parts of the query are sent to Server2
Both servers read data and perform necessary calculations
Finally, results from Server1 and Server2 are merged and returned to the client
All this should happen automatically, without need to explicitly reference Server1 or Server2. I mean such parallel query execution - is it possible?
UPDATE 2
Thanks for the tips, John and wuputah.
I am researching alternatives of increasing both availability and capacity of MOSS database backend. So what I'm looking for is some kind out-of-the-box SQL Server load balancing solution that would be transparent to the application, because I cannot modify the application in any way. I guess SQL Server has no such feature (and Oracle, as far as I understand it, does - it is RAC mentioned by wuputah).
UPDATE 3
A quote from the Top Tips for SQL Server Clustering article:
Let's start by debunking a common
misconception. You use MSCS clustering
for high availability, not for load
balancing. Also, SQL Server does not
have any built-in, automatic
load-balancing capability. You have to
load balance through your
application's physical design.
What you're really talking about is a clustering solution. It looks like SQL Server and Oracle have solutions to this, but I don't know anything about them. I can guess they would be very costly to buy and implement.
Possible alternate suggestions would be as follows:
Use master-slave replication, and do your complex read queries from the slave. All writes must go to the master, which are then sent to the slave, so things stay in sync. This helps things go faster because the slave only has to worry about the writes coming from the master, which are already predetermined on behalf of the slave (no deadlocks etc). If you're looking to utilize multiple servers, this is the first place I would start.
Use master-master replication. This means that all writes from both servers go to each other, so they stay in sync (at least theoretically). This has some of the benefits as master-slave but you don't have to worry about writes going to one server instead of the other. The more common use of master-master replication is for failover support; master-slave is really better suited to performance.
Use the feature John Sansom talked about. I don't know much about it, but it seems its basis is splitting your database into tables on different servers, which will have some benefits as well as drawbacks. The big issue is that since the two systems can't share memory, they will have to share a lot of data over the network to compute complex joins.
Hope this helps!
RE Update 1:
If you can't modify the application, there is hope, but it might be a bit complicated. If you were to set up master-slave replication, you can then set up a proxy to send read queries to the slave(s) and write queries to the master(s). I've seen this done with MySQL, but not SQLServer. That's a bit of a problem unless you want to write the proxy yourself.
This has been discussed on SO previously, so you can find more information there.
RE Update 2:
Microsoft's clustering might not be designed for performance, but that's Microsoft fault. That's still the level of complexity you're talking about here. If they say it won't help, then your options are limited to those above and by what you do with your application (like sharding, splitting into multiple databases, etc).
Yes I believe it is possible, well sort of, let me explain.
You need to look into and research the use of Distributed Queries. A distributed query runs across multiple servers and is typically used to reference data that is not stored locally.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms191440.aspx
For example, Server A may hold my Customers table and Server B holds my Orders table. It is possible using distributed queries to run a query that references both Server A and Server B, with each server managing the processing of its local data (which could incorporate the use of parallelism).
Now in theory you could store the exact same data on each server and design your queries specifically so that only certain table were referenced on certain servers, thereby distributing the query load. This is not true parallel processing however, in terms of CPU.
If your intended goal is to distribute the processing load of your application then the typical approach with SQL Server is to use Replication to distribute data processing across multiple servers. This method is also not to be confused with parallel processing.
http://databases.about.com/cs/sqlserver/a/aa041303a.htm
I hope this helps but of course please feel free to pose any questions you may have.
Interesting question, but I'm struggling to get my head around this being beneficial for a multi-user system.
If I'm the only user having half my query done on Server1 and the other half on Server2 sounds cool :)
If there are two concurrent users (lets say with queries of identical difficulty) then I'm struggling to see that this helps :(
I could have identical data on both servers and load balancing - so I get Server1, my mate gets Server2 - or I could have half the data on Server1 and the other half on Server2, and each will be optimised, and cache, just their own data - spreading the load. But whenever you have to do a merge to complete a query the limiting factor becomes the pipe-size between them.
Which is basically Federated Database Servers. Instead of having all my Customers on one server and all my Orders on the other I could, say, have my USA customers and their orders on one, and my European customers/orders on the other, and only if my query spans both is there any need for a merge step.
We have literally 100's of Access databases floating around the network. Some with light usage and some with quite heavy usage, and some no usage whatsoever. What we would like to do is centralise these databases onto a managed database and retain as much as possible of the reports and forms within them.
The benefits of doing this would be to have some sort of usage tracking, and also the ability to pay more attention to some of the important decentralised data that is stored in these apps.
There is no real constraints on RDBMS (Oracle, MS SQL server) or the stack it would run on (LAMP, ASP.net, Java) and there obviously won't be a silver bullet for this. We would like something that can remove the initial grunt work in an automated fashion.
We upsize (either using the upsize wizard or by hand) users to SQL server. It's usually pretty straight forward. Replace all the access tables with linked tables to the sql server and keep all the forms/reports/macros in access. The investment in access isn't lost and the users can keep going business as usual. You get reliability of sql server and centralized backups. Keep in mind - we’ve done this for a few large access databases, not hundreds. I'd do a pilot of a few dozen and see how it works out.
UPDATE:
I just found this, the sql server migration assitant, it might be worth a look:
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/solutions/migration/default.mspx
Update: Yes, some refactoring will be necessary for poorly designed databases. As for how to handle access sprawl? I've run into this at companies with lots of technical users (engineers esp., are the worst for this... and excel sprawl). We did an audit - (after backing up) deleted any databases that hadn't been touched in over a year. "Owners" were assigned based the location &/or data in the database. If the database was in "S:\quality\test_dept" then the quality manager and head test engineer had to take ownership of it or we delete it (again after backing it up).
Upsizing an Access application is no magic bullet. It may be that some things will be faster, but some types of operations will be real dogs. That means that an upsized app has to be tested thoroughly and performance bottlenecks addressed, usually by moving the data retrieval logic server-side (views, stored procedures, passthrough queries).
It's not really an answer to the question, though.
I don't think there is any automated answer to the problem. Indeed, I'd say this is a people problem and not a programming problem at all. Somebody has to survey the network and determine ownership of all the Access databases and then interview the users to find out what's in use and what's not. Then each app should be evaluated as to whether or not it should be folded into an Enterprise-wide data store/app, or whether its original implementation as a small app for a few users was the better approach.
That's not the answer you want to hear, but it's the right answer precisely because it's a people/management problem, not a programming task.
Oracle has a migration workbench to port MS Access systems to Oracle Application Express, which would be worth investigating.
http://apex.oracle.com
So? Dedicate a server to your Access databases.
Now you have the benefit of some sort of usage tracking, and also the ability to pay more attention to some of the important decentralised data that is stored in these apps.
This is what you were going to do anyway, only you wanted to use a different database engine instead of NTFS.
And now you have to force the users onto your server.
Well, you can encourage them by telling them that you aren't going to overwrite their data with old backups anymore, because now you will own the data, and you won't do that anymore.
Also, you can tell them that their applications will run faster now, because you are going to exclude the folder from on-access virus scanning (you don't do that to your other databases, which is why they are full of sql-injection malware, but these databases won't be exposed to the internet), and planning to turn packet signing off (you won't need that on a dedicated server: it's only for people who put their file-share on their domain-server).
Easy upgrade path, improved service to users, greater centralization and control for IT. Everyone's a winner.
Further to David Fenton's comments
Your administrative rule will be something like this:
If the data that is in the database is just being used by one user, for their own work (alone), then they can keep it in their own network share.
If the data that is in the database is for being used by more than one person (even if it is only two), then that database must go on a central server and go under IT's management (backups, schema changes, interfaces, etc.). This is because, someone experienced needs to coordinate the whole show or we will risk the time/resources of the next guy down the line.