MS Access hangs when comparing 2 link tables - sql-server

I have 2 link tables in a MS Access database. One of the link tables links to a table in a Sybase database and the other links to a SQL Server database.
The tables structures are same and has the same data too, barring a few rows.
I tried the 'Find unmatched rows' query wizard to compare the two tables and find the number of rows which are same (and different). But the problem is this makes the MS Access hang for huge tables (10 million+ rows).
Are there any settings that I can tweak so that Access does not hang? I am using ODBC connections to Sybase and SQL Server.
One more thing I noticed is when I right click on the SQL Server link table and click on open, it shows all the rows from the table. When I do the same for the Sybase one, it hangs and I have to close Access through Task Manager.
Some details:
Sybase version - 12.5.3
SQL Server version - 2008 R2
MS Access Version - 2003

On the face of it I would say the problem is that access is trying to do this query locally and is pulling most of the table down the wire. This is where you often get the myth that access does this all of the time when in fact it only does it on certain edge events. Is there anyway you could narrow down the data you are comparing? Maybe the table is a list of product sales and you could do one product line at a time or something like that?

Related

SQL Server databases tables exist, but are not visible

I have an odd issue on a Microsoft SQL Server that I manage. Two of the largest tables in a database are not visible in the Object Explorer.
When doing Right Click > Tasks > Shrink > Files, on the database, it is showing the data file as 99% unused. However in the following screenshot it is clear that there's over 500GB used:
The disk usage by table shows these two tables have over 1B records and is the majority of space reserved in the data file.
However, when looking in the object explorer, the tables does not exist:
I know the table exists because I am able to run select queries against it. The SQL Server version is Microsoft SQL Server 2019 (RTM-GDR) Standard Edition (64-bit). I am also using a sysadmin account, and have confirmed that it is not a view.
Any idea what could be causing this?
Cheers,
It looks to me like you have temporal tables in your environment. The history table will show up underneath the base table in SSMS. Here's a screenshot from the WideWorldImporters sample database from MS:

Access 97 Frontend - SQL Server 2005 Backend Linked Table Error

I have a legacy Access 97 Frontend application which utilises a SQL Server 2005 backend over a SQL Server ODBC Driver (Connection), we use the Linked Table feature on this setup.
I create, amend and link in tables on a daily basis and I am aware of the conversions that occur between the different data types.
There seems to be an issue with one table that I recently created, it has exactly the same setup and permissions as many of the other tables in the database but once I link it into Access 97 it seems to show #NAME in all columns and I also receive an 'ODBC Call Failed' error.
If I remove the Primary Key from the table and do not select a 'Unique Record Identifier' then I am able to view the data in the table but I obviously can't edit it.
There are 3 columns which are VARCHAR's and are over 255, if I reduce these columns to 255 or less I am then able to view the data in the table but if I then try to edit or delete the data I receive a new error 'The Microsoft Jet Database engine stopped the process because you and another user are attempting to change the same data at the same time' - I know this is not possible because at present I am the only one with access to the table.
In this particular table there are 146 columns, if I delete half of these then the table starts to work as it should, again I have tables that have far more columns than this and work perfectly.
Troubleshooting issues like this can be frustrating for sure.
I have found this article very helpful for my linked tables:
Optimizing Microsoft Office Access Applications Linked to SQL Server
Specifically read the section titled Supporting Concurrency Checks.
One thing you might try is adding a "timestamp" column to the table in question.

Getting Data from an Oracle database to SQL Server

I am a SQL Server database developer. We have a current requirement that we need to link our product with an existing application of a client. Our product has a SQL Server 2012 database while the client's existing application uses Oracle 11g. Since the time limit for the project completion is limited we cannot migrate our application to Oracle.
The requirement is that we have to get the customer details from the Oracle database to do billing activities in our system.
So I went through a few links and found that SQL Server linked server can be used to do this. I have successfully created a view which uses the Customer table from the Oracle database using a linked server. It will solve our problem.
Now here are my questions:
Is there any better solutions to do this other than linked server?
Are there any drawbacks when using linked server for this?
Thanks in advance
One drawback to consider is that the filtering on your view may take place at "your" end, rather than in Oracle. e.g. if you have a linked server (using, say, an OPENQUERY statement) and a view based on that and you do this:
select id from myView where id = 4711
expecting that the result will be very quick (assuming id is indexed etc.etc.), then you may be in for a shock as what will actually happen is:
the entire contents of the Oracle table are passed to SQL Server
SQL Server then filters this data, i.e. the filtering cannot be "pushed
down" into the view objects (as they are remote).
N.B.: I know there are two ways to define linked server (openquery and the other one, I forget the details), so this may not always apply, but you should be aware of the potential performance hit.

MS Access to MS SQL Linked data - extremely long updates & deletes?

I have an MS Access application with data in a separate access mdb. We need to move the data to MS SQL. Previously when I did this is worked very well - dramatic speed improvements. In this new upgrade however, we are seeing some problems with translating of the SQL from Access to SQL.
We have the solution separated into an APP mdb and a DATA MDB. We use Linked-tables to join the two. After migrating the data to SQL server, we created an ODBC link, then re-pointed the linked-tables to the SQL data source over ODBC. We would expect the SQL command generated by Access, to be simply transferred to SQL server, for SQL server to operate on same using its normal efficiency and power.
When I put a trace on SQL Profiler, instead of seeing for example a simple "Delete * from table", we see a series of delete statements, one for each record in the table ...
We see the same thing for updates - where we would expect for example "insert into table1 (select a,b,c from table2)...) to be sent as an SQL string, to be executed on the server, we instead see a series of insert statements, one per row being inserted, being sent to the server.
It seems that Access is trying to work out the logic for everything but select statements client side and not letting MS SQL server take care of things as one would expect.
Anyone experienced this behaviour before and can offer a suggestion to resolve?
thanks.

SQL Server data transfer

In SQL Server, I have a data source server which has 22 databases and in each database there are 5 tables. Every db has the same table includes different data separated through years.
I want to collect all this data into one single database. Destination database will have only 5 tables, while source has 22 x 5 = 110 tables. I'm using import-export wizard to transfer data but it takes too long and really annoying stuff. For 110 tables I'm going to have to start import-export wizard.
Is there a simple way, tool to do this? There is no linked server between servers.
Here is a simple figure that explains my situation.
Posting my comment as an answer:
Back up each database, restore it to server 2 and then insert the records across using a simple INSERT .. SELECT statement, then drop the restored database and restore the next? You should be able to script this to work unattended, even the creation of all the backups could be scripted to only need a single 'run' which will run for all databases
Your other option (if space permits) is to create a new database on server 1 (potentially a restore of the database on server 2 if it has data already in it), then import all records across into this new database, then backup this database and restore it on server 2.
It depends on several thing like how often do you want the data to be moved, will it be changed on the destinations DB's?
There are 4 methods of High Availability on SQL Server. One of them will surely fits to your scenario (probably a merge replication)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190202.aspx

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