i have an access front end. the backend is a sql server database. can i have users download the runtime and have the full functionality of being able to edit the sql server database from the access front end? why is it free? what makes it different from the whole version?
In a nutshell, the Access Runtime version allows you to distribute an Access Database application to machines that do not have Access or Office installed. It won't allow you to open the database in design view or to make any changes to the database apart from adding or editing data. They can contain the data tables or can be set up using linked tables so that you have a central database (in some cases a shared .mdb file on a network, or something like SQL server)
Because many Office 2007 installations are not the professional version (Home and Student, Small Business etc) which does not include Access, making the runtime freely available is to encourage Access Developers to build databases which may be used in such cases or even in instances where office is not installed at all.
See: Running in Runtime vs. Full Access 2007
In a nutshell, the runtime version allows you to change data but not objects (forms, reports, queries, etc).
Related
I have a questions regarding databases for ASP.Net 4.0 MVC3 (or 4 Beta).
I'm fairly new to the ASP.net MVC environment, and usage of databases in general.
It's stated that the SQL Server Compact is a local database storage. What does this exactly mean? If I were to use this for my web app, would users be able to "access" this database (e.g. register, login), or would I be the only one with access since the file (.sdf) is "local" and is only in my hard disk?
Let's say I'm coding a library management system which would require storage of alot of stuff in the DB. Would it be better to just use the SQL Server Compact that comes with Visual Studio or should I switch to MySQL or some other databases?
I'm asking because I wanna clear everything up before I step into the world of ASP.Net (and since I'll be dealing with DBs alot in future).
The "local" is relative to where the application code runs, not where the user is. If you're using ASP.NET MVC, the application code runs on the server, to the database has to be on the same server. All users using the web application can use it though since the access is done by the application.
I'd use SQL Server Express for that, version 2008 R2 does have a limit of 10GB per database (not including FILESTREAM data AFAIR) but that is already a lot of data. It's free but uses the same engine as the full SQL Server products, but it has some limitations on database size (as mentioned) and resource usage (parallel processing and memory), for many application it is still a perfect solution though.
No, in this case "local" means that it's contained within the package of the web site itself. You'll want to deploy the database file along with the website (but take care not to overwrite it in future subsequent deployments), of course. But the idea is that the database is a file that you put on the server, not a service installed on the server.
Define "a lot of stuff." I doubt you're going to exceed the capacity of SQL Server Compact, or absolutely require features it doesn't provide. You'll want to compare all of the features available in the various databases. (Size limits, native data types, ease of integration, ease of management and deployment, stored procedures, etc.) Chances are any database will work for you, but you'll have to define your needs in more terms than just "a lot of stuff."
1)
SQL SErver Compact edition is a light weight free, embedded, database engine that enables easy database storage. That means you dont need to install any software in a computer for this database to work. you can simply copy the dll of SQL Server compact edition and put in your bin directory and start using it. No additional setup or security permissions are required for it to run.SQL Server CE Stores database as a files on disk. The file extension will be .sdf You can store SQL CE database files within the \App_Data folder of your ASP.NET Web application
Here is how it looks like in a project.
You can do the same things you did with a standard sql server express instance with SQL CE too. So your users would be able to access the data ( thru your application).
2) SQL Server CE would handle this up to an extend. If you have so much data coming in, you probably want to try something bigger like SQL Server express edition etc.. But the migration is easily doable because it is a miniature version of the real SQL Server Database.
If you are in a shread hosting environment and dont have the ability to install / get access to SQL Server instance, you can go with SQL Server CE as it is file based.
This is a good reading to start with : http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/06/30/new-embedded-database-support-with-asp-net.aspx
We're developing an aspx project with Visual Studio 2010 Professional, SQL Server 2008 R2 and Team Foundation Server 2010. Since the development is being carried out in multiple offices, each developer has their own local instances of the databases.
I want to bring these multiple databases under source control (or at least the schemas of the DB, structure and stored procedures - data doesn't matter to me). My preferred approach is to add database projects to the VS solution, which is already source controlled in TFS. Any changes will be distributed by TFS, and can be deployed locally.
The problem I'm having is that the database projects contain a reference to a local database instance (server & name). When someone gets the latest version of my changes, they will have a reference to my local DB instance (which is different to their local DB instance). They would need to change the DB details (thus checking the dbproj out) in order to get my updates.
So, is there any way that the database server & name can be left out of source control while the schemas remain under source control? Any help would be much appreciated!
I'm not sure if you can. However, you could use an alias, so all of the developers use a database on their local machine, but referenced by the same alias.
Take a look at: http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/1620/how-to-setup-and-use-a-sql-server-alias/ for how to set an alias up.
That way you can separate the database from the connection details.
I'm involved in developing a unique enforced database source control solution called DBmaestro TeamWork.
It has a plugin to SSMS which allows the developer to work directly on the database objects (change their working environment), run their tests and then perform Check-In which reads the metadata (tables' structure, procedures, functions, views etc.) to the version control repository.
With the Impact Analysis it is easy to merge changes from different databases to a single database.
The impact analysis algorithm perform 3-way analysis (not just a simple compare & sync) to identify changes origin from developerA which should not be reverted when developer merge his changes and it ignores the database name when running the impact analysis or generating the delta script.
A colleague I work with recently told me that SQL Express and MS Access were essentially the same thing; that does not seem to be an accurate statement. I know you can convert Access to a SQL DB and maybe under the covers they are similar, but I would assume that the SQL DB engine and what is used to run access are not the same. Not only that, but the SQL statement syntax, etc. I know are not the same.
I am mainly trying to understand so that I am more informed about the versions.
Um, no, not the same.
First off, I need to clear up some terminology. MS Access is a Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool that allows you to quickly build forms and reports that are bound to relational data. It comes with a file-based database engine (Jet/ACE).
Access the RAD tool can be used with many different backend databases (Jet, SQL Server, any db that supports ODBC, etc). I have to assume your colleague was specifically commenting on Jet/ACE, ie the database engine that MS Access uses.
I think the single biggest difference between the Jet/ACE database engine and MS SQL Server Express is that Jet/ACE is file-based and SQL Server Express uses a client/server model. This means that SQL Server Express requires a running service to provide access to the datastore. This can complicate deployment in some scenarios.
SQL Server Express is really just a throttled-back version of SQL Server: max database size of 4GB (10GB in 2008R2), only uses a single physical CPU, etc. These limitations are imposed to prevent large organizations from using the freely available Express edition in place of a full-blown SQL Server install. The upshot to this is that SQL Server Express offers a truly seamless upgrade path to SQL Server. It is also (generally speaking) a more robust and fully featured database management system then Jet/ACE.
Similarities
relational database management systems
written by Microsoft
Differences
MS Access
File based
free distributable runtime (2007 or later)
RAD tools (form/report designer)
uses Jet SQL
max file size 2GB
SQL Server Express
Client/Server model
free
no RAD tools
uses Transact-SQL
max database size 4GB (10GB for SSE R2), max one physical CPU
I think what your colleague had in mind was SQL Server CE, which is a super-lightweight embedded database, which is still (IMO) far superior to Access in database-management aspect. SQL Express cannot even be compared with Access without offending the former.
Here are the datasheets for both products so you can see some hard facts on the difference between the two databases.
Access:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/access-specifications-HP005186808.aspx
SQL (Express is listed on the far right column):
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/editions-compare.aspx
The comment I have always read is that Access is great for single user single access database use, the minute you scale beyond a single user look elsewhere. While that may be a "bit" of a stretch, Access really does not do well in a multi-user environment. From experience we've had a client who has ignored and ignored our requests to migrate a backend database from Access to SQL, and there have been numerous occasions where we have had to restore from backups, or take the Access database offline due to corruption.
They are two completely different technologies with two different target markets. The database engines are indeed different, as you mention T-SQL is different than Access SQL.
You can "scale up" an Access database to SQL by creating an SSIS package or other tool to do the import, but this takes the Access schema and data and migrates it to a true SQL database. It does more than just attach the Access database or the like.
Anytime you need a "real" database I'd highly recommend looking at any of the SQL versions that are available over Access.
Just remember that with MS-Access you don't have size limitations if you play your cards right. There is no reason, for example, not to have many 2 to 4 Gig tables each contained singularly in their own database. Your ODBC applications can open a connection to multiple MS-Access databases and query the single table in each. So you can have a database containing trillions of records, stored in multiple MDB files. One company I went to work for was using a single MS-Access database to run a issue tracking system done in MS-Access forms. They could only use it one person at a time because of sharing issues that would lock MS-Access up. I wrote a Win32 Perl native Windows GUI user-interface to the database that was better at field/record validation, and my ODBC code was able to manage the connection for simultaneous user access. I managed the opening and reading and writing and closing of the database for each user through my Perl program. I did not leave the database open. I did not maintain a persistent connection for each user, but instead only maintained a connection long enough to retrieve a record for edit. Then I closed the connection until it was time to write the record back to the database. Also, I wrote my own record locking program logic by maintaining a user login table that contained the record id of the record a user was currently editing, then erased that entry when no longer editing that record. When another user went to edit the same record, the program checked if that record was currently open for edit by another user. The system worked flawlessly. MS-Access never locked up via ODBC and multi-user access. I even embedded the password to the database in my compiled Perl program so that no one could get to the data in the Access database other than through my Perl program.
I have a two-part application, where there is a central database that is edited, and then at certain times, the data is released and distributed as its own application. I would like to use a standalone database for the central database (MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, SQL Server, etc.) and then have a reliable export to an embedded database (probably SQLite) for distribution.
What tools/processes are available for such an export, or is it a practice to be avoided?
EDIT: A couple of additional pieces of information. The distributed application should be able to run without having to connect to another server (ex: your spellchecker still works even you don't have internet), and I don't want to install a full DB server for read-only access to the data.
If you really only want your clients to have read-access to the offline data it should not be that difficult to update your client-data manually.
A good practice would be to use the same product for the server database and the client database. You wouldn't have to write SQL-Statements twice since they use the same SOL-Dialect and same features.
Firebird for example offers a server
and an embedded version.
Also Microsoft offers their MS SQL Server
as a mobile version (compact edition) and there are
also Synchronization services
provided by Microsoft (good blog
describing sync services in visual
studio:
http://keithelder.net/blog/archive/2007/09/23/Sync-Services-for-SQL-Server-Compact-Edition-3.5-in-Visual.aspx)
MySQL has a product which is called "MySQLMobile" but I never actually used it.
I can also recommend SQLite as an embedded database since it is very easy to use.
Depending on your bandwidth and data amount you could even download the whole database and delete the old one. (in Firebird for example only copy the database files and it will also work with the mobile version) Very easy - BUT you have to know if it will work for your scenario. If you have more data you will need something more flexible and sophisticated, only updating the data that really changed.
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.