We have several MS projects being used and a system written in SQL Server by us. Would MS Project Server allow us to set up something like SSIS procs to continuously get data from the MS Project databases and insert them into our SQL Server database?
Is there a way to link all systems or a better way to do this where we're not paying a monthly fee for MS Project Server? Would actually like to bypass MS Project Server if possible.
Thanks
Yes it is possible. You can write a vba routine which sends the schedule data up to a database. I've done this previously sending schedule data up to SQL server using ODBC.
You'd need to decide what data you want to see - getting task, resource and assignment data is quite straightforward, but if you need to look at time phased data that can slow things down. Then it's just a case of looping through the collections and using a SQL INSERT statement to squirt each task, assignment or resource up into the tables.
If that's all project server was being used for, then you can retire it and its supporting infrastructure. Additionally, you would then only need Project Standard client, which is about half the price of the Project Professional client.
Related
suppose I have a custom CRM software, writing data to MS-SQL-SERVER 2005, and I am trying to pull data from MS-SQL-SERVER to MS-Project-client 2010. I did some reading and have this questions:
what is the "best" way to pull data from sql-server to Ms-Project-CLIENT 2010? Can I do that "directly" without Ms-Project-SERVER?
how about push it back to SQL-server from ms-project-client 2010? I read somewhere using the xml structure in ms-project and it is not recommended...
Do I have to use VBA (in Ms Project client 2010) or VB 2010? (I have only those options: VB/VBA)
Sorry if it looks like amateurs, but I really need help.
Suppose your application write to it's own database and it doesn't write to MS Project Server database(s).
If the assumption is correct than you definitely shouldn't care about MS Project Server. You practically have two options how to write to the database and your choice depends on things like: do you want to distribute login and password for the database to all users.
You can either write "directly" to the database using OLE DB or ADO either from .NET Add-On for MS Project or from VBA macro. Or you can create intermediate server and send your data to the server and that server will interact with the database.
But if your application writes to MS Project Server database and the server's version is 2007+ - I would highly recommend to do that either through Project Server Interface (PSI) or through MS Project Automation. When MS Project writes to database it does lot of magic and it would be better to let it does it's job or you have a great chance to corrupt the database in some way and recovery will be painful and/or expensive.
I'm looking for the best approach (or a couple of good ones to choose from) for extracting from a Progress database (v10.2b). The eventual target will be SQL Server (v2008). I say "eventual target", because I don't necessarily have to connect directly to Progress from within SQL Server, i.e. I'm not averse to extracting from Progress to a text file, and then importing that into SQL Server.
My research on approaches came up with scenarios that don't match mine;
Migrating an entire Progress DB to SQL Server
Exporting entire tables from Progress to SQL Server
Using Progress-specific tools, something to which I do not have access
I am able to connect to Progress using ODBC, and have written some queries from within Visual Studio (v2010). I've also done a bit of custom programming against the Progress database, building a simple web interface to prove out a few things.
So, my requirement is to use ODBC, and build a routine that runs a specific query on a daily basis daily. The results of this query will then be imported into a SQL Server database. Thanks in advance for your help.
Update
After some additional research, I did find that a Linked Server is what I'm looking for. Some notes for others working with SQL Server Express;
If it's SQL Server Express that you are working with, you may not see a program on your desktop or in the Start Menu for DTS. I found DTSWizard.exe nested in my SQL Server Program Files (for me, C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\Binn), and was able to simply create a shortcut.
Also, because I'm using the SQL Express version of SQL Server, I wasn't able to save the Package I'd created. So, after creating the Package and running it once, I simply re-ran the package, and saved off my SQL for use in teh future.
Bit of a late answer, but in case anyone else was looking to do this...
You can use linked server, but you will find that the performance won't be as good as directly connecting via the ODBC drivers, also the translation of the data types may mean that you cannot access some tables. The linked server might be handy though for exploring the data.
If you use SSIS with the ODBC drivers (you will have to use ADO.NET data sources) then this will perform the most efficiently, and as well you should get more accurate data types (remember that the data types within progress can change dynamically).
If you have to extract a lot of tables, I would look at BIML to help you achieve this. BIML (Business Intelligence Markup Language) can help you create dynamically many SSIS packages on the fly which can be called from a master package. This master package can then be scheduled or run ad-hoc and so can any of the child packages as needed.
Can you connect to the Progress DB using OLE? If so, you could use SQL Server Linked Server to bypass the need for extracting to a file which would then be loaded into SQL Server. Alternately, you could extract to Excel and then import from Excel to SQL Server.
I have a client that uses a point-of-sale solution involving an Access database for its back-end storage. I am trying to provide this client with a service that involves, for SLA reasons, the need to copy parts of this Access database into tables in my own database server which runs SQL Server 2008. I need to do this on a periodic basis, probably about 5 times a day.
Is there an easy programmatic way to do this, or an available tool? I don't want to handcraft what I assume is a relatively common task.
I am running this on SQL Azure, so there's no way for me to run prepackaged software on the server. It would either have to be open source and portable to Azure or executable on the client's computer.
I'm unfortunately thinking I'm going to have to roll my own tool to do this. Any suggestions or more tools that are out there that can do this themselves before I go ahead?
David, I looked at multiple solution for a similar problem: converting from dbf to mysql, here are 3 solutions (all commercial - but relatively inexpensive) that can work for you:
Full Convert
SQL Manager
ESF
Other than that I couldn't find a good robust data conversion tool that would be open source or free. At least not for DBF to MySQL conversion. There might be something out there for SQL/Access. You could roll out your own solution, but is it worth your time?
DISCLOSURE: I ended up using Full Convert.
Also all of these products generate some sort of batch file, that can be scheduled using Task Manager.
There are two things to consider:
connectivity
ETL tool
For connectivity, you will need to establish VPN tunnel of some sort between the client server and your server.
Then use SSIS to connect to MS Access, to create packages to pull data from MS Access to SQL Server database. On SQL Server, you will need to create new schema, to mirror or be close MS Access
On connectivity side, another option - since MS Access db is in the file, you may be able to FTP the file to your server and point SSIS to the file
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.
Microsoft Access is a slick way to access data in a MS SQL Server backend database, but I've always had problems accessing (so to speak) large tables of data, especially when trying to toggle between results and design mode in Access.
Access gives me a number of nifty things, not the least of which is Crosstabs, but this hung connection to the server drives me a little crazy!
Does any MS Access gurus know how to optimize the ODBC connection so it isn't doing what appears to be full table scans when I just want to tweak and build my queries?
The ODBC driver will pass as much work as possible to SQL Server but as soon as you use a vba function like Nz or non-SQL Server syntax like PIVOT then the ODBC driver must pull back more data and indexes to get the work done on the client side.
As per other answer either build your views in SQL Server and link to the views or else use an Access Data Project.
NB: PIVOT queries with unknown number of columns cannot be handled in SQL Server in the same way that Access will do this natively - so if you run a pivot in Access against SQL Server data you will likely pull the whole table back. Pivot queries must be built in SQL Server using dynamic SQL techniques or else pre-saved views that have all the columns hard coded. Check out this link for one way to do this:
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Advanced+Querying/pivottableformicrosoftsqlserver/2434/
As others have said, the only way to improve performance on large tables is to have the SQL Server database engine do the work for you. A method of doing this which hasn't been mentioned is to use a pass-through query, which will enable you to keep all your code in MS Access, without having to create objects on the SQL Server:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303968
You will have to write SQL Server T-SQL rather than the Access dialect; however, SQL 2005 (when running in compatibility mode 90) does support a PIVOT command.
My similar problem was that the ORACLE ODBC connection hung after selecting the Link table/ODBC connection. Task manager said not responding after 10's of minutes. The connection then pings ORACLE for all available tables. I had turned on logging on the ORACLE ODBC Administrator, so it had to write all these things to the log, slowing any results by perhaps hours. The log was 60 MB one hour later, when I turned it off, then everything was fine!
To turn it off go to the Oracle installation/Network Administration/MS ODBC Adminstrator/Tracing tab and turn it OFF!
A good resource on ODBC is here: http://eis.bris.ac.uk/~ccmjs/odbc_section.html
Unfortunately Access is not able to push a lot of that work to the server, and yes, it will do huge table scans when designing queries against multiple tables or views in SQL Server.
You can build and tweak queries (views) in SQL Server using SSMS and store the views in SQL Server for a massive performance boost and still use Access for your front end.