Can I store any custom tables in SharePoint's own database?
Is this supported behavior or not?
(I mean tables in MS SQL database, not SharePoint lists.)
If I can, how well does this play with backup/restore functionality?
What are possible caveats?
For anyone wondering why I'm asking: there's an app which is bound to SharePoint server and needs to store some purely relational internal information that doesn't make sense apart from that SharePoint instance. I would like to narrow down data storage to one place but I'm not sure if SharePoint likes its database being used for other purposes.
I'm using SharePoint 2007.
Is it possible? Sure. Should you? Nope.
The SharePoint content/configuration databases are subject to change with any update Microsoft releases, and any changes you make will very likely be destroyed, and if your farm depends on them, be left non-functional.
If you want to store purely relational data in a set of tables, just create another database. There's nothing stopping you from using the same SQL Server instance that houses your SharePoint content and/or configuration databases to store other relational databases as well.
Not a good idea: Support for changes to the databases used by Windows Sharepoint Services
...
Making any modification to the database schema
Adding tables to any of the databases
...
If an unsupported database modification is discovered during a support call, the customer must perform one of the following procedures at a minimum:
Perform a database restoration from the last known good backup that did not include the database modifications
Roll back all the database modifications
It is even worse than the above. It is likely that future upgrades will notice your changes to the content database schema and refuse to upgrade the database period.
Related
Are there any SQL Server Replication Best Practices? Are there any links I can read up on?
I’m using 2012 and 2014. I want to know, in general, what type of database objects typically people replicate
from the source instance (publication) to the target instance (subscription)? Table is definitely one of them.
If there are a lot of views associated with the source database and probably not being used in the replicated
database (target/subscription), should I include them in the replication process? What about stored
procedures? In both cases, would it be better just to replicate the data and manually deploy the views and
stored procedures? I’d like to get some ideas/suggestions? Thanks
Here are some resources that cover replication best practices and improving performance:
Best Practices for Replication Administration
Enhance General Replication Performance
You can find a list of database objects that can be published using Replication here:
Publish Data and Database Objects
If the objects are being used at the replicated database (subscriber) then yes, you should replicate the objects. If not, feel free to exclude them from the publication.
The benefit of including them in the publication, rather than manually deploying them, is that replication supports schema changes to published objects and when you make schema changes on appropriate published objects at the Publisher, those changes are propagated by default to all Subscribers. This is covered in Make Schema Changes on Publication Databases.
We have a requirement where we will have to move data between different database instance on regular basis. (For e.g. some customers willing to pay more for the better performance). So this is not going to be one off.
The database tables has referential integrity. Is there a way in which this can be done without rewriting sql script (or some other method) every time we migrate customers data?
I came across this How to move data between multiple database's table while maintaining foreign-key relationships/referential integrity?. However it appears that we have write script every time we migrate data (please correct me if I misunderstood the answer on this thread).
Thanks
Edit:
Both servers are using SQL Server 2012 (same version). Its an Azure SQL Server database.
They are not necessarily linked (no firewall between them)
We are only transferring some data, not the whole database. This is only for certain customers who opted pay more.
The schema are exactly same in both databases.
Preyash - please see the documentation on the Split-Merge tool. The Split-Merge tool enables you do move data between databases, as you have described, based on a sharding key (e.g., customer ID). One modification that you will need for your application is to add a shard map (i.e., a database that understand the global state of which customers resides in which databases).
Have a look into Azure Data Sync. It is much more aligned with your requirements. But you may end up in having another SQL Azure DB to maintain a Hub. Azure data Sync follows hub-spoke pattern and will let you do all flexible directional syncs with a few minutes of syncing gap. It is more simple and can set it up very fast without any scripts and all as you wanted.
Our IT manager is asking my help on deciding on which would be the best to save the data. Is it in sharepoint or sql server.
On my side I don't know much about saving data on sharepoint server, how does it work, how fast, how secured, etc. I even have a doubt if sharepoint is capable of complex database design. As far as I know, sharepoint is not a database server that's why I have this doubts.
So obviously I would say Sql Server would be my prefered storage and also because Sql server is known to me for a long time already. Considering my 3 weeks exposure on sharepoint vs. 7 years on Sql Server. I don't have the enough experience to witness the strength of Sharepoint for me to decide on what to do. So to be fair on sharepoint I would like to ask you guys out there who are more experienced on this.
My questions:
1.) Does sharepoint have the ability to store data?
2.) If sharepoint can store data, what are the pros and cons?
3.) Can it cover a complex design such as relational database design like sql server does?
4.) If you where to develop a sharepoint project, would you choose sql server as the backend?
Thanks in advance!
It obviously depends on the application, and complexity of it, who the client or audience is, and how you want to deploy it.
Here are my answers to your questions:
1. Yes
2. Pros:
It provides a UI for updating data.
Cons:
Creating relational structures will be complicated.
Think custom lookup lists, associated with other custom lists.
3. Yes, but I wouldn't try it.
4. SQL Server, but this depends on the project and
isn't an entirely technical decision.
Personally, I think given your skillset, you should use SQL Server, if your manager has said it's up to you.
SharePoint itself is built on top SQL Server and ASP.NET.
Yes. You can create a custom list (basically similar to table structure), you can store document along with its metadata. You can store web pages if you are using it as your publishing (CMS) platform.
It's not supposed be a relational engine like SQL Server. Pro: versioning, workflow, for most cases, UI is there to support data input / editing. Con: Limitation of the UI w/ large amount of data.
To some degree you can relate one list to another field in a different list / document metadata.
See what I said before point 1.
SharePoint offers its own database layer built on top of SQL Server.
A complex object model is provided, and the SQL language API not available.
Acsess is by API, REST, and UI List Webparts with views; NOT SQL and the database is not accessible except through interfaces.
Deep inside data stored in Entity-Attribute-Value triples (specifically: site, web, list, item, state, field, value) such that each value goes into its own record. This is strickly non-tablular.
Maintains a dynamic end-user populated Metadata dictionary.
As a non-relational layer above a DB is offers inheritance, multi-type list, hierarchies, taxonomies, versioning, check in/out and other advanced features missing from a relational model.
Documents may be attached to a list.
Extensive use of GUIDS for identifiers, but this causes problems when moving partial related data between systems.
No referential integrity.
No joining of database tables or lists.
Filtering is more limited than in SQL.
No concept of a schema.
Parts of SharePoint break when restoring from a backup or when published to a separate site.
Rolling new features and data from development to production is problematic and sometimes breaks.
Hope this helps.
Sharepoint is obviously not a Database Server but somehow it works on some ways.
1.)Yes
2.)You can but not as complicated as Sql Server does.
Pros: It's the interfaces the gives sharepoint the edge, UI grants the user a friendlier way of inputting data.
Cons:Just like what I've said complicated database design is not easy to do.
3.) 100% Yes
4.) I would prefer Sharepoint if the application doesn't need complex design on data. Definitely Sql Server for enterprise type of application.
I'm looking for a strategy to allow automatic updates for a number of databases at customer sites through a publish-subscribe kind of mechanism. Right now there is a datacenter which has all the master data that get fed through extractions from hundreds of databases out there. The problem is that, whenever I need to do create a new view in the remote customer databases, I have to manually roll out an installation patch and ask the users to run it (their sites are behind firewalls, so I can't remotely do that from my end). Ideally, I would like to have a "DDL image" of the customer database schema at the datacenter, and whenever any change happens to it, all the subscribing customer databases would update their table view codes. The target databases are mostly SQL Server 2005 and Oracle.
I heard the MS SQL replication services could do such a thing? What about Oracle? anybody had experience with such?
Thanks!
Not sure about existing solutions, but how about writing your own auto-update mechanism that would run on a timer on the client machines and pull the latest schemas and views from some service table in your master database? Your change wouldn't get propagated straight away to all sites and some sites would update before others, but they would all eventually see the changes.
Golden gate might fit your needs.
I want to retrieve some data. How can I make a query on a Sharepoint database?
You shouldn't because of these reasons:
This is completely unsupported by the EULA you agreed to when you installed SharePoint. (I have to add a note that changing or calling triggers (except some) directly is unsupported, but not selecting)
Your queries are not guaranteed to work after applying any patches or service packs to SharePoint since Microsoft could change the database schema anytime.
Directly querying the database can place extra load on a server and hence performance issues.
Direct SELECT statements against the database take shared read locks at the default transaction level so your custom queries might cause deadlocks and hence stability issues.
Your custom queries might lead to incorrect data being retrieved.
Let me clarify, that #1 DOES NOT ALLOW you to modify sharepoint database in any way. SELECT`ing is permitted, however, as mentioned, that may lead to other problems.
However, if you are not interested in these points, then just use Visual Studio to connect to existing database, just do the regular procedure on how you connect to any other database.
But you can make your own database and store some additional information there.
Access SharePoint data the right way
Use SharePoint Object Model (Code can only be run on SharePoint server)
Use SharePoint WebServices (Run code from anywhere, from any application)
SharePoint 2013 now features REST API.
I have one thing to add. If you do decide to query sharepoint content databases directy, use the NOLOCK hint to prevent shared lock being taken out and potentially creating dead locks in the application.
If you don't mind using other proprietary Microsoft programs, Access/Excel/PowerBI all offer native connectivity to data stored in sharepoint lists/document libraries/meta data.