When users fill up a form on my Drupal 7 site, I need that information to go into a remote MS SQL server db. It's essentially a reservation system, so they fill up details like date/time and name, and when they click submit, these fields need to be pushed into a remote MS SQL db.
I'd like to know a) if this is possible and b) how do I go about implementing this?
A. Yes it is possible.
B. I recommend the below way, which is also the "Drupal" way of doing it.
Establish a connection to the remote database. Have a look here if you want to do it in your code, or have a look here if you want Drupal to take care of it by configuring settings.php. The key to switching between databases are db_set_active($database).
Run the queries you'd like to run against the MSSQL database. Just remember to put switch between the databases using db_set_active().
You can create a custom form in Drupal easily using its Form API in a custom module. In the submit handler for your form, you can insert the submitted data to your MS SQL database using any library avaiable in your PHP environment. Connection to the database is the tricky part, especially if your Drupal host is not running a Microsoft OS. In Drupal 7 running on IIS, you can use Drupal's Database API with the MS SQL driver. If your are not on IIS or Drupal 7, this is also doable without Drupal's Database API using PDO ODBC with unixODBC and FreeTDS. I did it, but I had a major issue when using typed bound parameters in my query, see Using typed bound parameters with PHP PDO-ODBC, unixODBC and FreeTDS.
That said, integration of applications at the database level is a bad idea. Such integration is tightly coupled. Any change to the schema of your MS SQL database or they way actual data are stored in columns will break your form submission. The best would be to have your reservation system provides a remote API to insert new data.
Related
We have an firebird database connected to our access control system and then a separate web app that I developed for our time and attendance using sql server 2005 as the data source.
I wanted to use entity framework to connect to the firebird database to access data like users, transactions, sites, etc. As this method is very complicated getting the connection using firebird .NET provider the other option I have is creating a sort of replication (Mirror) from the firebird database to sql server.
I have done this with a DTS previously (Selecting the data and then inserting it) and it worked fine but had many manual processes involved in getting the data and updates made it difficult.
Is there a simpler way to do this or any suggestions would be appreciated.
Unfortunately you need to track what to replicate at the data level. If you are only pushing it to the MS SQL database you could use a modified timestamp, or a record version field (create a generator, set a trigger to update the version field upon update) to reduce what you select. Another popular option is to update a field to current_transaction, but if you do a restore you will start counting from 0.
If you are sending data both ways it gets more complicated -- you need to have conflict resolution. You could look at something like the Microsoft Sync Framework which can use the methods above.
I have a wp7 app that uses the local database implemented with linq. I have an external MS-SQL (2008 R2) server. Both databases have the same schema.
I would like to know how to do the following:
Download information from the MS-SQL to the Database into the local DB of the phone. (Can I use some data-binding technique - I have found no links that do this)
If Changes made on the phone (add new record, edit existing record) how can I push changes back to server.
If changes are made to server then push to phone (I know I can use an observer pattern here)
I should also note that the client app is not used always-on access to the internet.
Thanks
There's no magic here.
You will need to create functionality to get updates from the server (probably meaning you need some kind of timestamp on each record, saying when it was last changed so you can query it).
You will need to create the functionality to upload data and update the database on the server (and potentially handle conflicts).
I would either use ODATA to communicate with the server, or plain old WCF/JSON service.
have a look at the Sync Framework Toolkit
I'm writing an inventory/payroll system, and I'm storing all the records on a remote server running SQL Server 2005 on Windows Server 2008 R2. I was wondering how I could start writing forms(very basic) in MS-ACCESS 2010 to upload things to the database. I just want to test it out to make sure that once I implement the entire database, things will work smoothly and without error. I want to figure out how to just make a single form that will be connected to the database, right now the form will just be a simple single text input with a submit button, that will be uploading barcodes(strings not images).
If I need to clarify anything, please just ask.
Thanks in advance for any help
Microsoft has tons of useful "Getting Started" articles.
This one explains how to connect to SQL Server: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/import-or-link-access-to-sql-server-data-HA010341762.aspx
This one covers all sorts of forms: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/CH010369205.aspx
Go there, you will find a lot that can help you with whatever you are going to do.
Make sure you have the SQL Client driver installed on the workstation where you'll be using MS Access. You can download it here (look for sqlcnli).
The simplest way to get started is to build an ODBC DSN. Access can then link to your SQL Server tables using that DSN. How to Create a DSN
In Access, Go to the "External Data" option and choose ODBC. Locate your DSN and then select which tables you want Access to be linked to.
After your linked tables are showing up in the tables list, click on one of the tables, go to the Create tab (2007, not sure about 2010) and choose Form. This should automatically create a form for you using the table you had selected when you clicked the Form button. There's no need to write code or add buttons to this form. The default form can do all CRUD operations as long as permissions for all CRUD have been granted to the username you used when you created your DSN.
Some developers prefer to use ADO (code only, no linked tables or form wizards) or Pass Through Queries to access SQL Server from Access. I can't really tell you what you should be using because it depends on so many different factors including (but not limited to) size of project, amount of records, skill level, personal preferences, etc.
i am in a multi-user environment
i am using access as a front end connecting to sql server database. i am allowing users to edit only one table in sql server.
i dont want to continue using access to edit a sql-server table.
can someone recommend another tool to do this?
The Access 2007 runtime and the Access 2010 runtime is free for the download from Microsofts website. Of course you'd want to purchase Access licenses for power users who want to create their own queries usually for export to Excel.
Either Access or Excel are almost certainly the simplest solutions available that meet your requirements, when you consider both the simplicity of the user interface itself and the simplicity of implementing, deploying, and maintaining the solution for the users. Creating even a simple web page isn't nearly so simple – you'll need to setup a web server, configure user security, develop the web page, etc.
Use SSMS -- Sql Server Management Studio.
Update
Found a near duplicate #SU: Less daunting front end for SQL Server
Update 2
Try to use Microsoft ASP.NET Dynamic Data. And a tutorial on YouTube, of course.
Sounds like you need to give CRUD access to a table in a SQL Server database.
Suggest making a simple page - use ASP.NET Dynamic Data. Watch this video to get started with ASP.NET Dynamic Data.
Failing that, provision the user with Microsoft Access.
setup a new user in SQL Server, and give it permissions on that table only.
setup Access to read, update, create and delete that table. Use the credentials of the user in the bullet above. This will ensure they can't mess anything else up.
Only bring that table into the user's view.
If you pull down a copy of visual studio express you could build a single screen application that allows editing a table with just drag and drop from the server explorer. No coding needed unless you're looking to add some more advanced logic.
Alternatively you could just use Access to also build a one screen front end - with that as the start up form to your Access DB your users wouldn't even know they're in Access.
Edit:
Assuming you're in a windows domain - put all your users in to a security group and then grant this group access to the SQL Server. Only grant the group permissions on the specific objects that they need to edit.
Create a blank Access DB.
Link your SQL Server table in to the Access DB - e.g. in 2007 the option is in the External Data ribbon > more... > ODBC database.
Once you have the table linked create a form to edit the data by doing Create > more > Form Wizard.
This allows you to pick the exact columns you want them to edit, pick a layout etc.
From here the options are really only limited by how much effort you want to put in but it's a good start in contrast to direct table access.
I believe it's still in Beta but you might want to also take a look at WebMatrix.
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.