Importing data from Postgres to Microsoft SQL Server 2012 - sql-server

I'm being demanded to develop a new software that must be built over SharePoint and use Microsft SQL Server 2012.
I have a DB in Postgres, and some of its tables will be used in this new project, so I must import these tables, everyday. I'd like to use WebService to do it, but they want it to be done DB-to-DB directly.
Postgres-to-Postgres is already done and it "works", but importing to Microsoft is being troublesome.
Does anybody know some MSSQL tool that can connect to Postgres and do the import?

Typically for this sort of situation (assuming that it'll be a process that's repeated on a regular basis) you'd use SSIS (comes with most versions of MS SQL Server). Have a look at the first several hits on this Google search, especially the first one.
Another option is to connect to the Postgres database directly from your application via ODBC, and eliminate the redundant copy of the data - and get real-time updates instead of having to wait for the next execution of the SSIS job.

Related

How do I convert Microsoft Access file into SQL Server database?

I want to know how to convert an Access database file into a SQL Server (.mdf file) database?
The MS Access "Upsize Wizard" was discontinued with Access 2012. SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) is now recommended. Reference: https://accessexperts.com/blog/2013/01/30/access-2013-is-here-but-wheres-the-sql-server-upsizing-wizard/
However, as Johnny Bones noted, I found it relatively easy to create a new empty SQL Server (2012) database and then import:
SQL Server Management Studio, R-click on the newly created Database | Tasks | Import Data -> SQL Server Import Wizard
I used "Access Database Engine" instead of "Jet Database Engine" for
no reason other than I GUESSED Jet was older. Mine is a throw-away
project you may want to research the difference.
I 'weeded out' the
Access queries (views) and just imported the tables.
So far it looks
like everything was imported OK.
The simple answer is; you can not "convert" an Access database to a SQL database. You can, however, import the Access database (tables only) into SQL. Remember that SQL is a true database, and, as such, contains no front end or GUI creation mechanisms. You will still need Access (or C# or VB or another front-end builder) to create the interface.
You may already know this, but in SQL Server a Query is called a View, and Modules are called Stored Procedures. You will need to convert your Access queries and modules accordingly if you're planning on having that all reside server-side.
It's actually pretty easy to import Access tables into SQL Server, you would just create a database on a server, right-click on the database name and choose Tasks --> Import Data. There you will choose Microsoft Access as your Data Source. The rest should be pretty self-explanatory.
JonnyBones wrote a good full answer. Other have made suggestions for tools which may work. However, the SSMA (SQL Server Migration Assistant) is likely to be the best option now. (See this youtube video for help with understanding some of the issues to overcome and an explaination of how to use SSMA.
Befre you consider using other tools, which may do more, you should find out why to use them instead of SSMA. Check out the youtube video as a starting point.
Be aware that the MS Access Upsizing wizard was great but is now discontinued, and there was a bit of a gap before MS created a decent version of SSMA, which is when&why these other tools came into existence.
SSMA should do what you need.
There are some access things that do not get moved to SQLServer and some that do.
eg Access triggers do not. Access tables constraints do, Access boolean datatypes so - of sorts - but you need to do some work. The video will explain most issues well.
Harvey
You can try with the Upsize Wizard or copy content of the table from SHOW TABLE DATA and paste to the target table with the same structure as the source.

Extract from Progress Database to SQL Server

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.

Microsoft Access to SQL Server - synchronization

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

What is a good automated data import method for SQL Server?

I'm in the process of porting some SQL Server 2005 databases to SQL Server 2008. One of these databases has an associated import application (Windows task) which uses SSIS with a DTS package to import a large dataset from an MS Access database nightly.
In upgrading to SQL Server 2008, I discovered that I can't run the same console application which has been performing the imports due to the missing manageddts DLL in SQL Server 2008. It's several years old and in need of a rewrite for various reason, plus, I've been fairly unhappy with DTS in general. The original reason DTS was chosen was for speed (5 min import time compared to 30+ for ADO.NET).
The format of the data to import is out of my control (the client likes Access). I would also like to be able to run the import from a machine completely separate from the server hosting SQL Server and preferably with minimal SQL features installed.
Options I've considered:
Creating an Access application to connect to both databases (SQL Server and Access) and perform the import (Ugh!)
Revisiting ADO.NET to see if the original implementation was poorly written.
Updated SSIS packages.
What other technologies should I be considering for this job?
I received a suggestion that I use ADO.NET to convert the .mdb file to a bunch of flat files, then use tsql's bulk insert statement to import the flat files. If it works, I'll mark this as the answer.
EDIT:
This worked really well. Far speedier than the old DTS. One down side is that the import user must have bulkadmin rights, and the schema of the flat files must precisely match the tables, but a little coding solved the latter, and a secure, dedicated user account answers the former.
I'm fairly happy with the result.
I guess you should try SSIS. If you don't know enough of it, you will learn a new thing.

Importing Access data into SQL Server using ColdFusion

This should be simple. I'm trying to import data from Access into SQL Server. I don't have direct access to the SQL Server database - it's on GoDaddy and they only allow web access. So I can't use the Management Studio tools, or other third-party Access upsizing programs that require remote access to the database.
I wrote a query on the Access database and I'm trying to loop through and insert each record into the corresponding SQL Server table. But it keeps erroring out. I'm fairly certain it's because of the HTML and God knows what other weird characters are in one of the Access text fields. I tried using CFQUERYPARAM but that doesn't seem to help either.
Any ideas would be helpful. Thanks.
Try using the GoDaddy SQL backup/restore tool to get a local copy of the database. At that point, use the SQL Server DTS tool to import the data. It's an easy to use, drag-and-drop graphical interface.
What error(s) get(s) thrown? What odd characters are you using? Are you referring to HTML markup, or extended (eg UTF-8) characters?
If possible, turn on Robust Error Reporting.
If the problem is the page timing out, you can either increase the timeout using the Admin, using the cfsetting tag, or rewrite your script to run a certain number of lines, and then forward to itself at the next start point.
You should be able to execute saved DTS packages in MS SQL Server from the application server's command line. Since this is the case, you can use <cfexecute> to issue a request to DTSRUNNUI.EXE. (See example) This is of course assuming you are on a server where the command is available.
It's never advisable to loop through records when a SQL Update can be used.
It's not clear from your question what database interface layer you are using, but it is possible with the right interfaces to insert data from a source outside a database if the interface being used supports both types of databases. This can be done in the FROM clause of your SQL statement by specifying not just the table name, but the connect string for the database. Assuming that your web host has ODBC drivers for Jet data (you're not actually using Access, which is the app development part -- you're only using the Jet database engine), the connect string should be sufficient.
EDIT: If you use the Jet database engine to do this, you should be able to specify the source table something like this (where tblSQLServer is a table in your Jet MDB that is linked via ODBC to your SQL Server):
INSERT INTO tblSQLServer (ID, OtherField )
SELECT ID, OtherField
FROM [c:\MyDBs\Access.mdb].tblSQLServer
The key point is that you are leveraging the Jet db engine here to do all the heavy lifting for you.

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