Multiple SQL transactions on a network server - sql-server

I am developing an application that will be used by many users in the same time (on a network). The application will use SQL Server.
I want to know if it's good to use transactions for different queries that I have. If one user start a transaction at a time and another user starts one more, will the server know whom is a random transaction? Multiple transactions at a time are supported by one single server?

Yes, SQLServer supports multiple simultaneous transactions. There would be no point in having transactions if you could not run more than one at a time.

Related

How should I design the multiple same applications update one database

I'm managing an online book store website. For sake of high availability I've setup two Tomcat instances for running the website application, they are the exactly same program, and they are sharing the same database which located in another server.
My question is that how can I avoid conflicts or dirty data when the two applications do the same updates/inserts at the same time to the database.
For example: update t_sale set total='${num}' where category='cs', if there are two processes execute the above sql simultaneously would cause data lost.
If by "database" you are talking about a well designed schema that is running on an RDBMS such as Oracle, DB2, or SQL Server, then the database itself will prevent what you call "conflicts" by locking parts of the database during each update transaction.
You can prevent "dirty data" from getting into the database by adding features such as check clauses and primary-foreign key structures in the database itself.

How does SQL server insert data parallely between applications?

I have two applications.
One inserts data into database continuously like it is having an infinity loop.
When the second application inserts data to same database and table what will happen.
If it waits till the other application to complete inserting which will handle this?
Or it will say it is busy?
Or code throws an exception?
SQL servers have something called a connection pool which means that more than once connection to the database can be made at any particular time, and that's where the easy bit ends.
If you were to for example connect to the database on two applications at the same time and insert data in to different tables from each application then the two could happily happen at the same time without issue.
If however those applications wanted to do something like edit the same row then there's an issue with "locking" ...
Essentially any operation on a SQL database requires "acquiring a lock" on a "set" or "row" or "cell" depending on the configuration of the server its hard to say what might happen in your case.
So the simple answer is:
Yes, SQL can make stuff happen (like inserts) at the same time but with some clauses.
And long answer ...
requires in depth knowledge of locking and your database and server configuration.

What mechanism to be used for asynchronous communication between two SQL Servers in the case?

We use a central SQL Server (2008 Standard edition) and several smaller, dedicated SQL Servers (Express editions). We need to implement some mechanism for transferring data asynchronously* from the dedicated decentralized SQL Server (bigger volume, see below) and back from the central SQL Server (few records, basically some notifications for the machines and possibly some optimization hints).
The dedicated SQL Servers are physically located near technology machines, and they are collecting say datetime, temperature rows in regular intervals (think about few seconds interval). There are about 500 records for one job, but the next job follows immediately (the machine does not know it is a new job--being quite stupid in the sense -- and simply collects the temperatures on and on).
The technology machines must be able to work without the central SQL Server, and the central SQL Server must work also when the machine is not accessible (i.e. its dedicated SQL engine cannot be reached, switched off with the machine). In other words, the solution need not to be super fast, but must be robust in the sense that no collected data is lost.
The basic idea is to move the collected data from the dedicated SQL Server (preprocessed to the normalized format with ID of the machine) to the well known table on the central SQL Server. Only the newer data should be sent to minimize the amount of the data. That transfer should be started by the dedicated SQL Server in regular intervals (say one hour) if the connection is OK. If the connection is not OK, the data will be sent after next hour, etc.
Another well known table on the central SQL Server will be used to send notifications for the dedicated SQL Server engines. This way the dedicated engine can be told (for example) what data was already processed/archived on the central SQL Server (i.e. the hint for what records may already be deleted from the local database on the dedicated machine), or whatever information that is hinted from the central (just hints or other not the real-time requirements). The hints will be collected by the dedicated SQL Server (i.e. also the machine responsibility). In other words, the central SQL Server only processes the well known, local tables. It does not try to connect the dedicated SQL Server machines.
The solution should use only the standard mechanisms -- SQL commands (via stored procedures), no external software. What kind of solution should I focus on?
Thanks,
Petr
[Edited later] The SQL servers are at the same Local Area Network.
If you are willing to make a mental switch and stop thinking in terms of tables and rows and instead think in terms of data and messages then Service Broker can do handle all the communication, delivery and message processing. Instead of locally (on the Express machines) doing INSERT INTO LocalTable(datetime, temperature) VALUES (...) you think in terms of:
BEGIN CONVERSATION WITH CentralServer ...;
SEND ON conversation MESSAGE TYPE [Measurement] (<datetime...><temperature ...>)
See Using Service Broker instead of Replication or High Volume Contiguous Real Time ETL
Sounds like a job for merge replication.

Linked server vs integration

We have an application which needs to interact with 3 different databases
(SQL Server) to fetch the user details and display them on a web page. Is it a good option to use a linked server or should we copy the user details (via some daily job) to the application database?
Using a linked server will give you a round trip delay every time you query the data. If you only query the data once per day or per session this might be acceptable. If however you are issuing many queries to these servers you may find that the performance is so poor that your application is unusable.
You could use SQL replication to push (or pull) the data from each of the servers into a local copy on the application server. This will provide you with much better query performance (no round trip delay) while also ensuring that you have the latest data. There are lots of options with SQL replication you should be able to find something that suits your needs.
For more information on SQL Replication see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms151198.aspx
A linked server is only going to allow your databases to talk to each other. If the application is interacting with three discrete databases, then you simply need discrete connections. I would not recommend heavily using the linked servers unless you are moving a lot of data (since picking it up into the application and putting it into another database may take even longer).

Is SQL replication the answer?

For our application(desktop in .net), we want to have 2 databases in 2 different remote places(different countries).Is it possible to use replication to keep the data in sync in both the databases while application changes data?. What other strategies can be used? Should the sync happen instantaneously or, at a scheduled time? What if we decide to keep one database 'readonly'?
thanks
You need to go back to your requirements I think.
Does data need to be shared between two sites?
Can both sites update the same data?
What's the minimum acceptable time for an update in one location to be visible in another?
Do you need failover/disaster recovery capability?
Do you actually need two databases? (e.g is it for capacity, for failover or simply because the network link between the two sites is slow? etc)
Any other requirements around data access/visibility?
Real-time replication is one solution, an overnight extract-transform-load process could be another. It really depends on your requirements.
I think the readonly question is key. If one database is readonly then you can use mirroring to sync them, assuming you have a steady connection.
What is the bandwidth and reliability of connection between the sites?
If updates are happening at both locations (on the same data) then Merge Replication is a possibility. It's really designed for mobile apps where users in the field have some subset of the data and conflicts may need to be resolved at replication time.
High level explanation of the various replication types in SQL Server including the new Sync Framework in SQL Server 2008 can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms151198.aspx
-Krip

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